14 DAY TRIAL // ViewSonic Corp. announced on Monday that it intended to enter the smartphone market, and that it would make its first handsets available for mobile phone users in China, while also planning to offer them on the European and American markets in the future. The company's debut on the smartphone market also marks the materialization of its 3” – 300” product line.
ViewSonic’s first product in the area comes as a confirmation of the convergence between televisions, computers and mobile phones. The company's heritage in display technology is expected to offer it a great advantage in the development of smartphones, as the market demand has shifted towards larger screens, greater color saturation and contrast, which enhance the mobile experience when browsing the Internet, watching television or running video applications.
“With 20 years of display experience this is a natural extension of our product expertise,” said James Chu, chairman and chief executive officer of ViewSonic. “This is an important strategic step for ViewSonic, as it allows us to apply our display technology to an even larger and rapidly growing worldwide market.”
According to DigiTimes, the company could partner with OEM handset makers in Taiwan or China in order to make its move into the smartphone market, mainly due to the fact that it is heavily focused on “marketing branded products as its core competitiveness,” industry sources are reported to have stated following the company's announcement regarding the 3G smartphone segment.
In addition, the site also says that the first ViewSonic smartphones should come to the Chinese market as soon as the third quarter of the ongoing year, set to become available in the US and Europe later on. 3G smarphones are expected to see great traction on the Chinese market, following the inauguration of CDMA and TD-SCDMA services in the country, and the number of 3G users in China has been forecast to reach 70 million in the next two years.