Motorola Inc. said it has worked out the glitches and is in full production again on the RSVP, its slim cellular phone battery that contains a pager.
The product was introduced last October. It fits on both the Motorola MicroTac flip phone and the Retail Pocket Personal Telephone.
RSVP combines a numeric POCSAG or FLEX pager with a slimline nickel metal hydride battery with up to one hour of talk time and eight hours of standby. Pages can be received while the phone is off, a prime benefit promoted by the company.
Motorola experienced problems with the housing size of the gray RSVPs, which didn’t fit well on the phone. The company also tweaked the device to make sure pages could be received while the phone was transmitting.
With the problems fixed, the RSVP went back into full production and started shipping last month, said Allan Spiro, business manager for the RSVP. The product was created by Motorola’s Derivative Technologies division.
Motorola has found a market for RSVP with cellular retailers, who see RSVP as a cellular accessory, Spiro said. Motorola expects the product will sell for about $180.
Promoters are targeting two types of customers-those who already carry both a cellular phone and a pager, and those who carry a cellular phone and want a pager.
The RSVP is expected to compete for standard paging customers, but offers a clear advantage over new personal communication services products that will contain messaging, Spiro said.
