HANNOVER, Germany-Motorola Inc. introduced a portfolio of digital wireless devices at the
CeBIT exhibition and promised to offer Internet-browsing capability on its entire line of digital mobile phones by
2000.
The new product line includes what the company called the world’s lightest and smallest dual-band Global
System for Mobile communications phone and the first tri-band GSM phone, both for the European market.
The
company also said it will make all its digital phones compliant with the Wireless Application Protocol as soon as
interoperability standards for the protocol are secured.
“This means that consumers can expect to see the first
Internet-browsing capabilities appearing on a Motorola GSM phone by the end of the year, and across our entire digital
phone range in 2000,” said Frank Lloyd, president of Motorola’s Personal Communications Sector for Europe,
Middle East and Africa.
The product line was positioned as the first results of Motorola’s renewal process. Motorola
had lost significant market share in the handset space to competitors L.M. Ericsson and Nokia Corp. as it struggled to
cope with a digital transmission paradigm.
The L7089 tri-band phone operates on all three GSM frequencies, Lloyd
said, designed to allow users to roam across Europe, Asia and Africa without switching handsets. It includes voice
recognition for such commands as dialing and requesting voice mail.
