Do you know OKWAP? No? Me neither - not really. We have read about OKWAP's prototypes earlier this year but haven't heard about it furthermore. Now rumors are floating through the net that HP's recently unveiled iPAQs are on the earlier unveiled OKWAP prototypes and if you compare the following pictures, it seems to be true.

First of all, let us start with the iPAQ 600 which sports a kind of "virtual scroll wheel" and I've found something adequate at iTech News Net:

As you can see above, the design and keyboard layout looks quite identical but even more important, the OKWAP S868 features this kind of virtual scroll wheel as well.

The second device, the iPAQ 900 seems to be the OKWAP K871 which was announced earlier this year as well. And if I take the image and feature-set from Chinese website 3mt.com.cn (auto translated) and compare it with the iPAQ 900 rendering we have, it seems to confirm this rumor as well:

While OKWAP is completely unknown, other sources indicates, that these devices are manufactured by Inventec - better, not to say well known in the mobile device space.

Cheers ~ Arne

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Actually, OKWAP is well known in Asia.  It is the brand created and owned by IAC - Inventec Applicances Corp - which is now a completely separate company from Inventec Computer. 

IAC was the original and only manufacturer of iPods for at least the first 3 or 4 years of their production, until Foxconn and Quanta muscled in on the business.  s

IAC has for many years been a manufacturing partner of Palm as well. 

The OKWAP brand of cellphone have held top-5 brand (by sales) status in Taiwan for over 5 years and at least top-10 brand within mainland china for the past 2 or 3 years.

Say what you will about the style and design of these phones.  The manufacturer, however, has been in the handset game for many years.

Interesting read, thanks a lot for the update. Good to know where OKWAP comes from.

ask Jakob

Scoopster wrote:

Actually, OKWAP is well known in Asia.  It is the brand created and owned by IAC - Inventec Applicances Corp - which is now a completely separate company from Inventec Computer. 

IAC was the original and only manufacturer of iPods for at least the first 3 or 4 years of their production, until Foxconn and Quanta muscled in on the business.  s

IAC has for many years been a manufacturing partner of Palm as well. 

The OKWAP brand of cellphone have held top-5 brand (by sales) status in Taiwan for over 5 years and at least top-10 brand within mainland china for the past 2 or 3 years.

Say what you will about the style and design of these phones.  The manufacturer, however, has been in the handset game for many years.

While IAC has been in the game for a number of years, they are not as high ranking as you say.

According to CCID, OKWAP registed 0% market share in China in 1H07, selling just 20k units.

EDN put OKWAP as the number three domestic handset vendor in Taiwan at year-end 2006 with 1.9% market share, but number eight overall.