Qeo Wireless has pegged its hat on one product - a smart phone - that will enter the competitive cellphone industry as it looks to develop a product that will cater for specific niches.
The Cape Town-based company is funded by "angel investors" - private investors contributing their own funds - who have provided about R15 million over the past 18 months to cover the initial research and development and market research.
Qeo Wireless CEO Derek Hume says the phone, called the Q500, is being developed to offer an instrument that provides more than voice and data.
"The idea is to display data in a rich format rather leaving the user to scroll through text messages. It is in effect a mini-client server that has telephone functions as well."
Hume says it is the range of data services that differentiates the phone from its competition globally. "In developing the Q500 smart phone, we looked at the provision of data services and focused strongly on providing a user-friendly interface. The user experience is graphically richer and has been made much simpler than existing phones, with fast two-click access to any data service."
Current informational data services extend to the provision of financial information, news, weather, sports schedules/results, lottery results, gambling odds, horoscopes and movie schedules/reviews. Data services will also be transactional, including ticket purchasing, bet placing, stock trading and banking.
Hume says data services can also be tailored to the user`s requirements, and comprise both client and server software, and use the mobile phone network as a data carrier. This concept can be applied to enterprises requiring specific information flows for their daily business between mobile employees or customers such as courier companies. Furthermore, secure voice and data communication can be supported to satisfy today`s growing demand for confidentiality.
Another aspect is that Qeo Wireless is offering third-parties the opportunity to brand the mobile phone, both externally on the phone as well as internally through the software. This implies that corporate logos and colours will be tightly integrated in the mobile phone, enhancing brand awareness.
"There are also potential revenue spin-offs for local mobile network operators, who can increase the average revenue per user by offering information services directly or indirectly through third-parties. As a delivery platform, the Qeo back-end services can distribute vast amounts of daily information at an extremely competitive cost," says Hume.
There have been discussions held with the cellphone operators and Qeo Wireless, and Hume expects to have working prototypes during the third quarter for testing.
"The operators are not really interested in offering the various systems themselves, but they do recognise the need for such an instrument that will lead to increased bandwidth use and therefore revenue for themselves," he says.
Qeo Wireless expects to have the first working models of the Q500 ready and in use by the last quarter of the year.
Hume says the company has enough funding to keep it going for another two years as its product takes off and further research and development is done.
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