London, Jan 28: German industrial group Siemens, the world's fourth-biggest handset maker, said on Monday it would start promoting a "luxury" handset brand in hopes of expanding the stagnant world market.
While the focus of network operators is on boosting revenues by signing up customers to services on new mobile gadgets, Siemens said handset makers had to find different ways to increase the current global volume of about 400 million per year. So under a new brand, Xelibri, Siemens would try to sell people a second or third phone by simply promoting the slick looks of the handsets instead of what they can do.
Four models, ranging in price from 199 to 399 euros ($217-$434), will be unveiled on February 15 to coincide with London Fashion Week.
Xelibri President George Appling declined to give a sales forecast for the new phones, which will be released twice a year in Spring/Summer and Fall/Winter collections.
"Right now my sales are zero," he told a news conference in London. "We don't know how many we can sell, but we hope a lot."
While rivals have launched luxury phones, including one encrusted with jewels and another made of platinum, Siemens aims to forge a whole brand dedicated to making phone calls in style.
The Xelibri phones will be sold largely in Asia and Europe, where they are compatible with the local prevailing mobile technology and people are more likely to swap their cellphone number-bearing SIM cards between different phones, Appling said.
Xelibri's pendant-shaped, 399-euro phone is billed as the world's smallest and ostensibly could be worn as a necklace. It has no keyboard, but users can scroll saved numbers or "dial" by slowly reciting numbers using voice recognition technology.

Among the other space-age-styled handsets paraded by models at the news conference, one dangled from a chain-belt and others were hooked onto straps wrapped around the arm or the neck.
Asked whether showing off a phone was a good idea given the extent of street robbery involving mobiles, Appling confessed that he had not thought about that.
Siemens sold 11 million handsets in the three months to December on the back of strong Christmas sales. The handset operation made almost all the 59 million euro operating profit from its ICM mobile unit, which also includes mobile networks.
Dwarfed by Finnish handset-making champion Nokia, Siemens has stressed its commitment to mobile phones and brushed off rumours of a sale to a rival such as Motorola Inc.
Chief Executive Heinrich von Pierer, who says the handsets "keep Siemens young", has made something of a party piece out of holding up new models for the cameras and urging reporters, shareholders or anyone else standing around to buy one. Bureau Report