EMBEDDED STAR

Friday, October 22, 2004

Fortune 1000 Telecommunications Company Selects Quasar Handsets

10/22/2004 - Quasar has signed a deal with Fortune 1000 telecommunications global service provider for turnkey delivery of a range of cellular handsets under their (MNO) brand. Details of this undertaking are currently under NDA, but will shortly be available during the device prototype phase.

The service provider would be launching and marketing its future versions of their existing phone brand in territories new and old, where a tightly integrated bundle of phone hardware, software and VAS would provide the company with increased market definition, and subscriber lock-in. Another of Asia’s largest Original Design Manufacturers earlier provided the MNOs earlier phones, but the company has now turned to Quasar Innovations based on specific requirements that they feel Quasar can better fulfill.

The service provider relies on strong service differentiation and branding, a strategy that has made the company among the world’s fastest growing facilities-based telecommunications service providers. “We chose to work with Quasar because of their impressive understanding of the mobile device and the mobile consumer, and their ability to put together a large number of resources and relationships to fulfill our ambition in minimum time, inspite of the new re-design required at the heart of the phone and MMI. We needed a single stop design house that could match our own aggressive market expansion, pricing & customer acquisition plans.“ says the Managing Director for the MNO. The proposed cellular handsets will be available mid-next year, and target the mid-high end mobile consumer, with specific service offerings that are integrated closely with phone system software and hardware. Quasar is serving every phase of the project ranging from design, development, verification and validation, certification testing and certification and manufacturing.

About Quasar Innovations
Quasar provides OEMs & network operators with device-engineering services from concept to finish. Quasar's expertise is applied to creating flawless, high-performance terminal devices with shortened time to market and robust components. Quasar innovations offers turn-key contract manufacturing services to the mobile handset and terminal device market. Quasar’s customers include Primus Telecommunications, Nokia, Motorola, Lucent, Hutchison, Nortel, Ericsson, Idea Cellular and Bharti Cellular. Quasar has more than 800 man-years of experience in mobile and wireless design and telecommunications network provisioning and development, distributed among its 250 people.

The company is situated in Bangalore, India’s IT hub, and has grown at 300% year on year since its inception. Quasar also has liaison offices in North America and Europe to serve its international customers better. During its years in the wireless telecom area, QI has forged strong ties with market leaders such as Motorola, Ericsson and Texas Instruments. The company's rich expertise in the wireless design and development area not only contributes to its project management expertise, but also provides its customer’s the choice to license specific IP from QI such as Quasar’s SyncML synchronization software and Bluetooth profiles. Quasar’s unique ‘Virtual ODM’ model offers a one stop solution for its customer’s looking to engineer robust, cutting edge, purpose-specific devices with minimum rollout time, and lowered TCO and quick engineering turnaround against subsequent releases.