INQ's whole lease in life is making mass-market feature phones with heavy doses of social network integration, and considering how much acclaim
the INQ1 slider has received on account of its Skype and Facebook functionality (not to mention the fact that they've sold 700,000 of them), it only stands to reason that the Hutchison subsidiary would be looking to come out swinging with a new model or two. In fact, we already know that INQ's looking at doing
Twitter integration, and now we know from an interview with the company's chief exec that there'll actually be two new models -- one of which will be a themed "Twitter phone" -- in time for the holiday season. Though Reuters suggests that that'd make it the first mass-market phone with a Twitter client, devices like the
Sidekick LX 2009 already do it -- so INQ won't necessarily be the first in the game, but if can bring its wares to more than the Sidekick's... oh,
one fricking carrier, they've got an angle.
[Via
Phone Scoop]
posted Jun 3rd 2009 10:24AM
Please INQ, a QWERTY keyboard for the Twitter phone. Even a SureType one would be great. Thanks.
Given that INQ is part owned by H3G, it's doubtful that you'll see these phones on other network operators.
Also, support for Social Networking is starting to become a hygiene factor - like having GPS and a decent browser. People are going to expect that their phone does social networking, IM and twitter out of the box.
In other words, shoving twitter on a device and hoping that it'll differentiate on that alone isn't going to work. INQ need to come up with something new and compelling.
Yes, this is what I need. This one in my left pocket, the facebook phone in my right pocket,the myspace phone goes in the back pocket,...
Seriously, will this be the future? A phone for every freaking service/website that's on the internets? No thanks.