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After a major restructure, a new management team and over a year of development, Benefon will release its first new handset in years to the channel next month.
Benefon, which carved a niche with its location-tracking handsets and telematics products, plans to hit the consumer market for the first time.
Its first handset, the Twig Discovery, boasts full turn-by-turn navigation and voice direction and is unusual in as much as it is designed to be used both in-car and on foot.
‘This is a toe in the water, getting the product out there. Other products will come thick and fast,’ Benefon CEO Jonathan Bate told Mobile.
The Discovery comes with on-board maps and can even send picture messages to conventional handsets showing a map of the user’s location.
Benefon is expected to use next year’s 3GSM Congress to showcase further products, with new launches in February or March 2007. Two of the devices will be 3G. Benefon, which is using a contract manufacturer in China to produce most of its new handsets, will also license its core GPS tracking and location technology to a Far Eastern manufacturer to make its own devices offering Benefon functionality.
The company is backing the device with an online service that allows users to pinpoint a Twig user’s position anywhere they have GSM coverage.
The handset’s ability to work with Benefon’s GPS tracking units is something the manufacturer is pitching as a potential draw to business customers who have vehicles, boats or plant equipment they want to be able to trace.
Its UK distributor is 20:20, although Benefon has yet to cut a deal with a UK network. However, the Discovery offers retailers the prospect of being able to broaden the appeal of GPS devices through the use of operator subsidy on some networks.
