Mobile phone manufacturers are supposed to be laying off staff, but no one has told Sendo. Maybe it is because it is based not in the mobile heartlands of Scandinavia, but in Birmingham. Sales are doubling annually and next month it launches its long-awaited Z100, which is the world's smallest "smart" phone combining fast net access in colour with the functions of a personal digital assistant (PDA).
It is also the first phone to use Microsoft's mobile phone software, giving it access to the usual Microsoft services such as Word, Excel, etc, and synchronisation to PCs via a docking station (or over the air).
But make no mistake, this is a mobile phone with a PDA built into it and not the other way round, like the new generation of Palms and Handsprings that have phone functions added to a PDA. Amazingly, it weighs only 99g, yet packs in an awesome number of features, including a large screen (for a phone) and the best 3D games graphics I've seen on a phone. Among the large number of games in the pipeline are The Untouchables Pin Ball and IdeaWorks's Rebound.
It offers web browsing, Bluetooth (from September), Java and MP3 digital music files (there is an option to use Windows Media Player) and, soon, streaming video. A separate camera attachment will be available using the screen as viewfinder. It will be launched in Britain in August but overseas next month.
It can receive email, including POP3, and offers secure access to office emails behind your own corporate firewall. It does not offer instantaneous delivery of emails (like the Blackberry) but can be set to contact your email box, say, every half hour, to download waiting mail. The price is likely to be between $400 (£274) and $1,000 (£685), depending on operator subsidies and accessories.
I had a brief test last week with a pre-production model. If it works as claimed, then it could make quite an impact. The colour definition was much better than the Trium Eclipse, the current trend setter, and web browsing was impressive on the occasions we got through. The failures, unsurprisingly, were put down to the continuing network problems with GPRS - which is still optimistically advertised as being "always-on" to the web.
Unsurprisingly, given the links with Microsoft, which has a 5% stake in the company (the management and employees own 60%), the Z100 is being aimed at the corporate market, but consumers will be targeted at Christmas.
It invites obvious comparisons with Nokia's 7650 multimedia camera-phone (Online, June 6) and also with the Nokia Communicator. Sendo claims that even with its camera attachment it is lighter than the 7650 and has much more memory. It is well under half the weight of the Communicator but doesn't have the latter's widescreen and typeable keyboard (though a foldable add-on keyboard will be available).
Success will depend on whether corporate buyers prefer a lightweight pocketable phone to the bigger screen and heavier weight of the PDAs. Sendo, which hopes to sell at least a million in the first year, clear.y thinks it is on to a winner.
If it is, then Sendo may evolve from being an interesting niche player into a serious competitor. Sendo - still barely two years old - is a "second generation" mobile manufacturer along with Pogo (also British). If they both succeed, we may have a British renaissance on our hands.
Sendo has developed a distinctive business model. It has a staff of around 300 in Birmingham (including 180 engineers) and farms out manufacturing to subcontractors. The Z100 will be made by Celestica at Kidsgrove, less than an hour's drive away, and sold through co-branding deals with operating companies. Although it only started producing last June, it claims to be near profitability already.
How is it possible to make phones in Britain with the strong pound and the high cost of labour compared with the Far East? Ron Schaeffer, head of product strategy and planning, says that the assembly line is so automated that labour costs don't make much difference with such high value products.
Sendo admits that its fast expansion is from a low base and that it doesn't even appear on the radar screen of the statisticians monitoring global market shares. It hopes to sell between 2m and 4m phones this year. This number is small compared with the 400m to be sold worldwide.
But it is an impressive achievement for a UK company at a time when there is worldwide retrenchment. It can scale up production very quickly to meet increased demand. A lot will depend on the reception the Sendo gets and whether the GPRS problems can be sorted out. If they are, then we will be hearing a lot more about Sendo in future.
