Live from the Arima Press Conference talking about the ODM capabaility of Arima in the Symbian / UIQ ecosystem.

Rafe report's live from the Arima press conference:

Peter Ju:
Arima are interested in modularized hardware to deliver different handset forms to different market segments.

Starting with GSM and GPRS will develop into EDGE, CMDA and beyond.

Arima also demonstrated the U300A with several special featurs including sliding keypad, swivel camera (taking pictures either side), 2.2 inch reflective screen, expandable memory with miniSD card (up to 1GB). Form is good for media and data communication.

The design is very robust, Arima have worked with TI OMAP chips and added unique features. Features include USB and bluetooth for wired or wireless communication. The phone includes a 'flash-LIKE' feature for taking picture in low light conditions.

Technology partners as enables: Texas INstruments, UIQ, Symbian, ART (handwriting), Tegic (keypad input), Media Centre (Phillips), Teleeca (WAP Borwser [1.1 currently, 2.0 soon], PC Suite, Bluetooth [handset, handsfree and DUN profiles]), Opera (browser), Symbian (Java MIDP 2.0), TTPCom (Mophun), Fathammer (X-Forge), and more...

Arima is YOUR brand smartphone. Arima is the first Symbian ODM / JDM handset producer.

Beta prototypes - November 2004 (pass pre FTA test)

Pre-Production - December 2004 (FTA Completed)

Production - Q1 2005

UIQ:

Excellent development in a remarkable time, and delighted to see ODM UIQ devices, believe UIQ customisation matches well with ODM devices.

What does ODM mean?
ODM menas the phone will be licensed by others and bought to market by them - not by Arima. Arima are using the U300 as a base platform and it is likely we'll see many variants of the base handset from different companies. Operators are likely to be an example of the companies that bring these handsets to the market.