Standard Telecom America Inc. said it will start shipping sample quantities of its Nixxo Swing alphanumeric pager in the next few weeks.
Swing is Standard Telecom’s first alphanumeric pager to hit the market, and at a price of $70 wholesale, it may be the industry’s least expensive two-line alpha pager, said Chris Rocca, sales manager for Standard Telecom America.
The Swing is only 2.6 inches long, 1.75 inches wide and .56 inches thick, and weighs in at a slight 2.3 ounces. The unit will operate using the POCSAG protocol. In addition to date, time and alarm functions, Swing offers 11 melody alerts, a stopwatch and four capcodes for carriers and resellers to program access to information services or stock and sports quotes. One of the capcodes is designated specifically for e-mail, said Rocca.
Standard Telecom said it is pleased with the industry’s response to Swing. The company has received orders for between 4,000 and 5,000 units, from paging resellers, which amounts to no more than 5 units per customer, said Rocca. A number of carriers are testing the pager.
The price point on Swing is about $20 below pagers with similar functionality. “As a manufacturer, we are able to offer [Swing] at a very low cost. We want to pass that along to resellers and end users,” commented Rocca. He expects the Swing will retail for around $100.
The company’s research and development team is looking into the possibility of producing a version of Swing based on the FLEX protocol.
Standard Telecom, based in Santa Clara, Calif., manufactures two numeric pagers, the Tutti and the Pop. More than 300,000 Tutti’s were shipped last year in the United States, said Rocca.
The Pop, an FM radio and pager in one, was introduced last fall and operates in the VHF frequency. So far between 5,000 and 10,000 units have been shipped. Due to customer demand, the company is producing a 900 MHz, FLEX version of Pop that Rocca expects will be available commercially in the third quarter. Pop currently is priced at $78 for resellers, which includes the radio headphones in a fully packaged gift, said Rocca. The product has been selling for about $100 retail.
