Kyocera Presents Mobile Handset Made For Russia

Japan's Kyocera Corp. presented its first handset made especially for the Russian market and cobranded with Russian mobile operator Sky Link.

Kyocera fully funded the design and production of the handsets but the volume of production will depend on how well Sky Link manages to sell the handsets in Russia, Kimitaka Tanaka, head of international business at the corporate mobile communications equipment unit of Kyocera said. He didn't disclose the amount that had been invested.

Kyocera's Sky Link slim-line design phone will come in black and silver and have a retail price of 5,500 rubles ($204) placing it in the medium-priced segment.

Tanaka said that it is the first time Kyocera has made a phone to suit the CDMA-450 standard, which is the standard of 2.5 generation or Code Division Multiple Access, which supports technology giving fast wireless Internet access.

He said that Kyocera can adapt the same phone to CDMA-800 standard, which is more popular in the world and sells in South East Asia or try to sell the CDMA-450 version in other parts of the former Soviet Union.

Alexander Piotrovsky, head of strategic marketing and sales at Sky Link, said he expects Kyocera's handsets to sell successfully and help the company add 120,000 to 130,000 users to its client base by the end of the year.

Piotrovsky said that currently his company, co-owned by AFK Sistema and Telecominvest has an average revenue per user of $58 a month, but that is likely to come down as the operator is aiming to increase its subscriber base considerably.