QuickWord, a new product introduced at the Consumer Electronics Show by Motorola Inc.’s Paging Products Group, is designed to keep families safe and in touch and encourage the use of paging for personal use.
The counter-top word entry device sends alphanumeric messages directly to word message pagers. QuickWord, which connects to any analog telephone line, increases privacy and accuracy by eliminating the operator when sending text messages, said the company.
“Our research tells us that growing numbers of families are relying on paging to provide peace of mind and a sense of security,” said Amy Kabcenell, Market Development Manager of Motorola’s North American Paging Subscriber Division. “More and more families are using paging to keep in touch, and more and more families are using word pagers.”
Kabcenell noted this type of product could have been deployed in a business market, but the company is focusing on households because of the growth potential in personal pager use.
“The primary reasons to use a pager are to keep in touch with work and to keep in touch with family,” said Kabcenell. “It’s getting to where the number of people using pagers for personal rather than for business purposes is growing.”
Julie Rietman, senior analyst with IDC/Link Resources, said, “It looks like the paging market is moving more toward the consumer. People should be using pagers more for personal reasons in the next few years.
“It’s starting to get where kids as young as five or six have pagers so their parents can send them messages,” she added.
Priced at around $80 and available this quarter, the QuickWord device allows users to send a customized or pre-programmed message of up to 80 characters to any of 10 pre-selected pagers. Customized messages can be created on the product’s standard Qwerty keyboard.
QuickWord also can be programmed to send the same page to either of two pre-programmed groups of five people.
Besides keeping families in touch, Motorola said the product can be a safety device as well. By pressing one button, a child who is home alone, or a babysitter, for instance, can send a pre-programmed message to any pager number programmed into the device by pressing just one button. The large, color-coded buttons with graphical icons make it easy to understand, especially for children, said Motorola.
Kabcenell said depending on the service provider, users could experience some cost savings by dispatching their own pages rather than using an operator. QuickWord won an Innovations ’98 award for excellence in design and engineering in the Mobile Electronics/Mobile Office category.
