A bit like a BlackBerry
It's widely agreed that smartphones are where all the action is in the mobile phone market these days in even moderately affluent markets. But we're still seeing a lot of what are now referred to as feature phones being launched, so we have to assume there's still a market for them.
LG has just announced the Town C300 - a fixed QWERTY phone in the style of typical BlackBerrys that lacks the OS and features like a touch screen generally associated with smartphones. Typically for lower-end phone launches these days, the big not-so-unique selling point is ease of social networking.
Paul Trueman, marketing director of LG Electronics UK and Ireland said: "We wanted to make social networking quick and easy for busy people on the go, and the LG C300 Town with integrated SNS widgets and a full QWERTY keyboard does just that."
We know that Blackberrys are surprisingly popular among younger consumers, where email, text and instant messaging are more important features than they may be for the rest of us. So the C300 appears to be an attempt to get some of that action.
But as we wrote yesterday about the launch of the Orange Android phone, If you're talking for more than an hour per month on your phone, the saving you get from buying one of these entry-level PAYG phones is questionable. The C300 costs £69 from Orange - only £30 less than its Android 2.1 phone. You will also be able to get it from Phones4U and Tesco before long.
Here's what LG considers to be the key features and a piccie.
- 2 megapixel camera
- Full QWERTY keypad
- Push email
- Instant messaging
- Facebook, Twitter and MSN clients
- Wireless FM radio and MP3 player
