A gift of Android for everyone

MANILA, Philippines - The presence of Cloudfone is a prelude to the extinction of feature phones.

Chico Pasion, national sales manager of Phone Co. Mobile Technologies Inc., disclosed that they might appear to be an underdog in the smartphone market, but they are actually a dark horse, which means a player to watch closely.

Cloudfone is one of the newest smartphone brands in the market. It started in January of this year yet, and started making noise just this September. During a launch here last November 30 of Cloudfone, he expressed that in a market quickly shifting from feature phones to smartphones, consumers are faced with a difficult choice of which smartphone brand and which operating system to choose.

All over the world, the Android operating system (OS) for smartphones has proven to be the winner in this category.

"Bid goodbye to your feature phones, because the future is here. Android - being open source - has allowed all current brands, as well as encouraged new brands to bring the smartphone experience closer to the Filipino consumers at very reasonable price tags," he added.

"This is also a very exciting gift idea this Christmas because you let the recipients feel that they should be part and parcel of the Android experience. And we won't fail you in that area because we have a gift of Android for everyone," he added in an interview right after the launch.

"Actually, we have 13 models but currently we are showing eight of them to you," he stressed. "So there is practically one for each member of the family. There's Thrill 500g perfect for daddy, a Thrill 430g for mommy, there's an Excite 350i for kuya."

"What's also worth noticing is the ergonomically curved design of our phones that allows the mouthpiece or speaker closer to the mouth so you don't have to bring the phone alternately to your ear and mouth while receiving a call," he added.

It was also highlighted that in Southeast Asia, the Philippines has been growing as the fastest in the region in terms of smartphone adoption, and the Android OS is fueling this growth.

The Cloudfone brand is a Filipino-owned company. However, like some leading brands it relies heavily on China for the assembling of parts since our government and the educational system have obviously failed in this aspect to prepare globally-trained workers for localized manufacturing opportunities.

"I would share in that sentiment that we are not geared towards that. Schools focus more on philosophy, religion, the humanities, when we should have prioritized science and technology, as well as math. Our Asian counterparts are really very strong in math. I would assume that because of our state of unpreparedness, we already lost an estimated 100,000 jobs because these were made available to a Chinese factory instead of one here in the country. In building phones, they need that much worker in just a single factory," he said.

Meanwhile, Cloudfone joins forces with Globe and MediaTek. The latter plays an important role in supporting device manufacturers with state of the art chipsets, allowing efficient implementation of the Android OS. To complete the smartphone experience, data connection is essential. As such, Globe Telecom plays an important role in this industry shift.

CloudFone also recently launched a range of Globe prepaid smartphone kit on the Mediatek chipset platform. This range of phones comes in 3.2, 3.5 and 4.3-inch screen sizes, starting at PhP2,599 to PhP5,999. It features an Android phone that will fit in any budget. Included in the prepaid kit bundle is a free Globe prepaid SIM. The SIM comes with free eight Saturdays of unlimited Internet. This will allow new smartphone users to experience mobile Internet without worrying about data charges.

The flagship CloudFone model is the Thrill 430g. It features a 4.3" touchscreen using the Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich OS running on a Mediatek MT6575 platform with a processing speed of 1GHz. The large 4.3-inch screen enhances the customer experience on various social media apps like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, as well as games on a big screen.

The CloudFone Thrill 430g is not only up on Globe prepaid kit bundles, but is also available on postpaid plan 499 at Globe Online (shop.globe.com.ph/cloudfone-thrill.html).

Cloudfone is making its commitment to provide an Android for everyone. It will be adding more Android phones in its lineup in time for the Christmas season. Surely, the partnership of Cloudfone with Globe Telecom and Mediatek will continue to fuel the leadership of the Philippines in smartphone adoption growth. We can look back in history to a time when the Philippines led the world in texting adoption, which led to the Philippines being the texting capital of the world. The Philippines can once again lead the world into the smartphone phase of the mobile world.

In the Visayas, Cloudfone is available at RC Goldline and Save n Earn. (FREEMAN)