A PDA in your phone

Recently incorporated Xplore Phils. Inc. is a one-product company that had its beginnings in the shopping district of Bangkok.

"I was looking for a cellphone that I could give my wife as a present or pasalubong," said president and chief executive officer Leo Riingen. "I was immediately drawn to this cellphone that is also a PDA (personal digital assistant). I thought to myself what a cool idea. Instead of putting the cellphone in the PDA, which is too big to fit inside your pants’ pocket, here is a product that puts the PDA in the cellphone."

Xplore Phils. is the exclusive Philippine distributor for Group Sense (International) Ltd., a publicly listed Hong Kong innovator that has been manufacturing handheld electronic devices for the past 13 years and that has a research base in Singapore.

Robust

Initially, the company is pushing GSL’s mid-range Xplore G88, which retails for P29,900.

"It’s an extremely robust phone. The applications are enormous, limited only by the thousands of Palm programs available," said Riingen.

Running on the Palm operating system, Xplore G88 benefits from having one of the sturdiest platforms on which to work with. With 48 MB of memory, the phone can store 10,000 addresses and 2,000 text messages. At 116 grams, it is the smallest and lightest Palm OS phone with a digital camera. And with the support of JAVA games and applications, the user can choose from over 10,000 online games to be planed on a high resolution color LCD or liquid crystal delivery.

"One of the games available in G88 is ‘Bejeweled’, an extremely popular, if addictive, downloadable online game which my wife likes to play. At work, the phone has an auto-alert feature that will confirm your meetings and will automatically send text messages to remind everyone involved of the scheduled meeting," said Riingen.

Given the market response, Xplore Phils. is already thinking of bringing in more GSL products and expanding its list of accredited dealers nationwide in 2005.