AsusTek in India will be launching a PDA phone with support of GPS (Global Positioning System) navigation. Priced at around Rs 35,000, the company claims it to be India's first PDA phone to have GPS support. The model-P535 tri-band PDA phone- incorporates full wireless functionality, GPS and high quality auto-focus camera in a compact form-factor. The tentative plans are to launch this phone in the month of January 2007 along with the appointment of a new national distributor for this product.

Originally developed for military use, GPS now has a wide range of civilian applications like tracing addresses in a foreign land, tracking distance and speeds on road trips, treks or while jogging. The P535 offers the capabilities of GPS in a compact, handy form-factor.

Asus would also be introducing the world's first wireless Skype music phone to the India market. Apart from the Skype support this phone, called the AiGuru S1, connects to any computer using 802.11b+g wireless broadband technology and can be used to listen to music from the computer.
Along with the P535 model, the company would be launching the P525 Quad-Band PDA phone also. The P525 quad-band PDA phone incorporates Push E-mail, Wi-Fi support and built-in numeric keypad to deliver a complete mobile business solution. The phone also integrates use of Skype's VoIP service.

Andrew Tsui, MD, AsusTek India, said, “We will be soon announcing an appointment of distributor for our phones.” Company insiders informed that the company has already finalized on the distributor but is not ready to disclose the same as formalities are yet to be completed.

While the company is ready to present the PDA phone as a first time phone launch from Asus, the channels are not convinced of the same. According to them, this is actually the second time, Asus is disclosing plans to launch phones in India. The first time such an announcement made was in February 2005, wherein the company had displayed two mobile phones and one PDA phone in Mumbai. These phones never entered the market. When asked about this, Tsui said, “Those phone model were signed up for an OEM contract arrangement and hence were not marketed here.”

Meanwhile, Asus has announced its plans to invest Rs 10 crore on expansion in India. In the first phase of its expansion plans, the company will shift to a larger office in Mumbai. This shifting is scheduled for the first quarter of 2007.

“Our growth plans aim at the expansion of not just the office but also of our capabilities of sales, marketing, service support and channel operations,” said Tsui It has also tied-up with RT Outsourcing Services as its service partner for its LCD monitors and notebook PCs.
With this tie-up, Asus expects to cover around 24 cities, which includes Bangalore, Chennai, Delhi, Kolkata, Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Chandigarh, Cochin, Hyderabad, Pune, Jaipur, Ludhiana, Lucknow, Dehradun, Siliguri, Indore, Coimbatore, Ranchi, Guwahati, Bhubaneswar, Patna, Jamshedpur, Raipur and Surat.

This initiative has been taken by Asus India as a measure to improvise and expand the service to its end customers. RT Outsourcing offers integrated helpdesk, repair and logistics services for IT, telecom, and CE businesses verticals and has a centralized state-of-the-art call center in New Delhi and one refurbishment facilities each in New Delhi and Bangalore.

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