Kyocera eyes Aussie PDA market

“It's just been released in Japan and Australia is the next launch. We are evaluating it with a view to launch in the market next year,” said Anthony Toope, marketing manager at Kyocera Mita Australia.

He said the product was a second generation PDA offering wireless Internet and e-mail through GPRS and “I-Burst” broadband wireless technology from ArrayComm. In June this year, i-Burst received a $25 million injection from a local consortium that included Vodafone and OzEmail.

The Pocket Cosmo runs Personal Java 1.2 on top of the Elate operating system from Tao Group and sports a 206MHz Intel StrongArm processor, 32MB of memory, a 3.5in colour TFT display capable of 65,536 colours and a Compact Flash card slot. A business-software suite gives users access to MS Word and Excel documents.

Kyocera will target the $1000 to $1500 PDA market with the device.

Meanwhile, Kyocera plans to open a Canberra office in December after joining the new Federal government's Strategic Partnerships Industry Development Agreement (SPIDA) program. Under the program, Kyocera will use components such as memory and network cards that are produced by local companies, Toope said.