BOLT Goes to Indonesia on K-Touch's Handsets

Bitstream Inc. has announced today that its BOLT browser will be included as the default solution on mobile phones delivered by K-Touch Mobile Indonesia. The license agreement between the two companies shows that the browser will be used on all types of handsets, and that all new devices delivered by K-Touch to the Indonesian market will include it.

“Handset manufacturers like K-Touch are making high quality mobile Internet capabilities a top priority,” said Anna Chagnon, president and CEO of Bitstream. “K-Touch is recognized for its high quality devices and believes as Bitstream does that quality must extend to the Internet experience. Through our partnership and shared vision, K-Touch and Bitstream will deliver the features and functionality desired by the Indonesian mobile market where people use mobile as the primary platform for connecting to the Internet.”

Indonesia has a number of around 140 million mobile subscribers, and is the third largest phone market in Asia, following China and India. Mobile phone users in the country are using mobile browsing at high rates, with 90 percent of Internet users in the country accessing the web from their handsets. According to Bitstream, Indonesia proved to be the largest market (outside of North America) for its browser during the eight-month beta test period BOLT had gone through. Approximately one in seven BOLT users lives in the country, the company says.

The first handset from K-Touch that will include the browser will be the H888, an entry-level device that sports a QWERTY keyboard and is aimed mainly at heavy chatters and Internet addicts. The high-end browsing solution will be included in a device that also comes with built-in shortcuts to major social networks, including Facebook, MySpace and Twitter, and IM capabilities via Yahoo Messenger, GTalk and Windows Live Messenger.

“K-Touch found BOLT to be the fastest mobile browser among those we tested, with better page rendering and more features than other comparable browsers such as Opera Mini,” said Rubi Sutanto, product manager at K-Touch Mobile Indonesia. “Bitstream is providing K-Touch with the fastest route to the best mobile Web experience. BOLT is simple to integrate with our handsets, making it easy for K-Touch to deliver our Indonesian customers the real Web on even our lower-end devices.”