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Lemak Lemang

A walk down the Yellow Brick Road of Malaysia's Corridor of the future

by Jeff Ooi, Malaysia

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CommunicAsia2007... minus the top two handset brands

Jun 27, 2007 15:22

I revisited CommunicAsia2007 last week after a lapse of two years. Two things struck me instantly: The crowd thinned out on Day 1, and the top two handset manufacturers were visibly absent. What gives?

LensaPress photo by Jeff Ooi

On the thinning crowd: Are regional telecommunications-related players looking for alternative tradeshows of their own? Or do the booths on parade no long reflect the sassy nature of what's new and what's hot?

Nokia and Motorola were no longer present with their big signature booths. In fact, Motorola as a global brand was muted, while Nokia focused on network solutions in collaboration with Siemens.

Are they looking for Steve Jobs type of B2B congregations like the annual MacWorld Expo and Apple Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) so that could stand out among the buzzing crowd and institute for fuller control over branding?

In the absence of the Nordic and American-originated brands, the Korean makes really made a impactful presence. LG and Samsung goodie bags were walking the exhibition halls quite a bit. In between, Sony Ericsson still commanded substantial attention with its Cybershot-embedded camera-phones

Noticeably, Samsung had come prepared with its Ultraslim Edition II featuring the U700 HSDPA handset as the flagship. It was hailed as The Ultraslim Edition 12.1 boasting a 12.1mm thickness. It has a 3.2-megapixel camera and embedded Google search function with RSS capability making Web surfing an easy task on mini-gadgets. Which is cool, as the other purchase decider lies on the aesthetics which can be rather subjective and personal.

Other Samsung models on parade were the i600, an HSDPA phone touted as the company's answer to 3.5G in addition to the built-in QWERTY keyboard and Windows Mobile 5 for Smartphone. Others showcased were the also-runs like the E840 and E950, and the F300 which boosts a powerful music player co-developed with Canadian audio marque B&Q.

LG, on the other hand, cut to the chase and focused single-mindedly on its latest Black Label Series, LG Shine, and the high-fashion Prada Phone.

LensaPress photo by Jeff Ooi

LG specially flew in the VC and business team leader for Asia, Middle-East and Africa, Bo Choi, and the GM for Southeast Asia and Oceania, Matt Seo, to meet the press. Apparently, there are reasons for celebrating as LG moved into the second half of 2007 by capturing targeted market share.

The media contingent from Malaysia was told that LG Shine had sold over 1.5 million units globally since its availability at the outlets from May. It was tracking closely the market dynamics paved by LG Chocolate previously.

LensaPress photo by Jeff Ooi

Prada, priced at an RRP of RM2,999, was an eye-catcher with a delicate "see-yes, touch-not" approach exploited by the two Caucasian models. It commanded arresting temptation for anyone vain enough to own one. Thus far, Prada has been launched in the UK, followed by high-fashion countries in France, Germany, Italy, Singapore and Hong Kong. Malaysia will see it on shelves from June 29.

The other also-runs from LG were the "3G for All" collection, including KU250.

The only regret was that the mobile broadcast models on show were of the CDMA mode used in Korea. It will be awhile for the market and industry to decide on the preferred format between DVB-H and DMB, but LG confessed it has the technology in tow and ready to market. Oh, yes, did I say that LG has yet to launch a competent HSDPA unit in the market?

Sony Ericsson chose to wow its fans with the 5-megapixel K850i, sporting a Cyber-shot camera with Xenon built-in flash. The other magic is the Photo-Fix that helps amateur photographers to "intuitively" overcome problems of under- and over-exposures for their pictures.

MP3 fans were also spoilt for choice. Sony Ericsson demonstrated sure knockout models in its W910i and the slim W880i. But I must say I still dislike the proprietary Memory Stick Micro that Sony has imposed on its users. I have all along desired independence from monopolistic rule.

The other also-run from Sony-Ericsson was the K530i. Slim is the keyword, but at 14mm it loses out to Samsung in the svelte domain.

Browsing around, I noticed some handsets built with the hype of GPS and HSDPA. DoCoMo showcased N9041 on the former as a selling point, while Huawei sported U550 to sell on the latter.

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About Jeff Ooi

Jeff Ooi is an Internet and e-Business consultant based in Kuala Lumpur who's spent the last four years blogging internationally on the tech scene, on anything and nothing. Which doesn't really explain why most of his own technology is about three years out of date. He doesn't even own a PDA after his Palm V crashed. He's on 3G, though... Lemak Lemang refers to coconut-flavored sticky rice stuffed in a bamboo container.