By Andrew Berg
Monday, October 5, 2009
It's sometimes the most obvious ideas that are hardest to realize. However, Kempler & Strauss appear to be doing just that by cutting to the chase and taking the best of consumer and enterprise handsets, mashing it into one device, and targeting it toward a prepaid market.
The company is unveiling two new phones, as well as a watch phone and accompanying Bluetooth "communicator" device; the devices will be featured at Kempler's booth at the CTIA I.T. & Entertainment conference in San Diego this week.
Isaac Calderon, president of Kempler & Strauss, says the new devices will target the unlocked phone market, focusing primarily on the prepaid space. According to Calderon, the highlight of the company's devices will be the Billionaire 7, a phone with a BlackBerry form factor, including full qwerty keyboard, as well as a full touch screen.
Calderon says the phone will retail for around $299. The phone, which will run Microsoft Windows Mobile, features integrated HSDPA/GSM technologies. The phone packs a 624 Mhz CPU to support multi-tasking and has two cameras: one on the rear for capturing still images and one on the front for capturing video during video conferences.
Meanwhile Kempler & Strauss also will be launching a mid-range touchscreen device, as well as the Billionaire watch phone. Calderon says while there have been plenty of watch phone attempts in the past, few have achieved a successful marketing strategy.
"What we do is first we make a watch phone with a full touch screen, big buttons, but the unique thing that we're integrating into the watch phone is the ‘communicator,'" a Bluetooth device that can be placed in your pocket as a pen, or clipped onto your belt, Caldeon says.
Calderon says the communicator cannot be lost, as the watch starts to vibrate when it leaves a certain radius from the communicator. All of the products Kempler & Strauss is bringing to CTIA this year will be mainly focused on releases in the United States and Mexico.