Netphones are newest Smart's bestseller

Smart Communications, Inc. (Smart) has sold out more than 50% of its initial stock of Netphones as of end-September 2011, making the handset its bestseller and prompting the telecommunications carrier to place additional orders to meet brisk demand. Smart took one year to develop the Netphone for the local market and started offering its P9,900 per unit Netphone 701 with free Internet until year-end on September 10, 2011. Its target was to bring mobile Internet to 30 million Filipino mobile phone users of which only 5 million regularly go online. “Filipinos are socially active online. We are the texting and social networking capital of the world “on the top list of Facebook and ranking 8th in terms of Twitter use,” Gio Bacareza, Smart Broadband Internet and Data Services Head pointed out. “However, most Filipinos only have access to social networking from their homes and Internet café. That’s why we came up with the Netphone, because we believe that social networking has to be mobile,” he added. “Most smartphones are designed for first world users who are always connected,” Bacareza explained. “But in developing countries like the Philippines, people want to pay for Internet in sachets. So, Smart developed the Netphone to be 'the marriage of web and telco.” Hence, Smart designed the Netphone, an Android-compliant smartphone which it introduced in Barcelona, Spain last February at the 2011 GSMA Mobile World Congress. Unlike other smartphones in the market todate, the Smart’s Netphone platform includes a suite of applications that allows Netphone users to chat, check their Facebook and Twitter social stream without switching applications, post online updates for free. The Netphone also features ‘Safe Browse’ which prevents other applications outside SmartNet from accessing the Internet when activated. With no applications accessing the web in the background users no longer have to worry about incurring extra data charges. By itself, the Netphone 701 allows users to access to over 300,000 applications for every need. The suite of Smart-branded apps via SmartNet provides all users access to social networks and chatting two of the most common activities people enjoy on the Internet. SmartNet has integrated one-touch access to Facebook, Twitter and Yahoo! Messenger, enabling users to stay online and keep tabs on their social activities for free until end of 2011, afterwhich Smart will decide whether to extend it or not. This was the same business model which worked successfully for SMS, which was initially offered for free.