Siemens Shows Stylish GSM Phones

NEW YORK -- German-based Siemens is taking a headlong leap into the North American mobile phone market, unveiling a handful of GSM-capable phones and offering a peek at future products that include an easily pocketed credit card-size phone, a leather phone, and other innovative designs.

Siemens is best known in North America as a maker of high-end hardware like network switches and corporate PBXs. But the new product line, which includes features such as browsers and PDA applications, are aimed at "city birds" around the world who both "work and nest" in cosmopolitan urban areas, says Ulrich Skrypalle, director of product design for Designafairs, a consultant to Siemens.

Most of the new models will be marketed by cellular service providers, who will set prices. Siemens is also working with the carriers on "fine-tuning their infrastructures" for future 3G wireless, says Rudi Lamprecht, president of Siemens' Information and Communication Mobile Group.

Combo Devices

Already shipping is the Siemens SX56 900/1900 GSM phone, available exclusively through AT&T Wireless, said Bernt C. Klein, senior vice president and general manager for Siemens' Mobile Phones unit. It is a combination phone and Pocket PC that comes with pocket versions of Microsoft Office applications, Microsoft Active Sync, a built-in MP3 player, as well as an extra memory slot. An optional folding or thumb keyboard is available; retail pricing is $549.99.

Siemens expects to start selling its new CT56 GPRS phone in the fourth quarter, solely through Cingular Wireless. The 3-ounce GPRS phone will come with polyphonic sounds; built-in games such as Flowboarding; and Enhanced Messaging Service (EMS), for adding sounds and pictures to text messages.

Siemens also showed its M46, a 1900-MHz GSM phone that will be offered through T-Mobile; and the A56, an 850/1900-MHz GSM model dubbed "affordable" and scheduled for release in the fourth quarter. The M46 and A56 each offer interchangeable CLIPit covers, with colors varying by model.

The "highly personizable" M46 will also provide intelligent typing T9 word recognition for faster messaging, a built-in data/fax modem, 20 built-in ring tones, and four customizable ring tones, according to Siemens officials.

The high-end S56 phone is expected to ship in the first quarter of 2003, Siemens representatives say. The Bluetooth-enabled device has a color display and detachable camera, and it supports Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS). It will be preloaded with business and travel guides, games like Jet Ski, and an animated fitness instructor called Fit @ Work. At the same time, Siemens will release a new two-part car cradle, adaptable to fit any phone in the series.

Also on Monday, Siemens unveiled plans to ship a new phone called the U10 to select European partners by December of this year, for use in upcoming European trials of UMTS 3G networks. The company also introduced European variants of most of the new phone models.

Eager Entry

"This is a red-letter day," Klein said at the product introduction here. Siemens announced its intentions to enter the North American GSM space two years ago. Siemens now claims to hold roughly 5 percent of the European mobile market.

The company tested the market with the S46, a GSM phone for "international travelers." It then previewed the SX56 and M46 at events earlier this year.

Siemens plans to tout its new phone lineup with a series of TV commercials themed, "What does your cell phone say about you?"

In creating the phones, Siemens is taking design cues from automakers like Audi and BMW as well as from European design specialists like Li Edelkorot, a style visionary from the Netherlands, and Warren Kade, who keeps tabs on street fashions in London.

Further down the road, Siemens' phones will use "authentic materials" such as leather and real metal, instead of plastic casings, Designafairs' Skrypalle says. The phones will come in "unusual form factors," too. Among the examples: a prototype of a credit card-size phone meant to fit into your wallet, an elegantly appointed triangular device, and an oval-shaped phone with a big screen in the middle for viewing video over 3G.