True to open iPhone 3G lounge in Siam Square

Papon Ratanachaikanont, True Corp's managing director for the lifestyle retail business, said the company would also position 120 iPhone experts at True Move shops in Bangkok and major provinces to give advice to iPhone 3G buyers and users.

Papon is confident second-quarter sales of the phones, each worth more than Bt20,000, will be higher than in the first quarter but declined to predict by how much.

One telecom analyst said True Move's total handset sales in the first quarter surged to Bt592 million, up from Bt188 million in the same period last year.

According to the analyst, the company says 70-80 per cent of handset sales value in the first quarter were contributed by the devices.

This contribution to the company's bottom line is not significant, due to iPhones' thin margin, but it probably helps True Move improve its positioning in the high-end post-paid market, the analyst said.

True Move, which is the only official Apple iPhone distributor in Thailand, launched the device in January.

At the time, it said a convergence strategy - bundling cellular phone service with cable TV and broadband Internet, coupled with the iPhone handsets - would help it increase its post-paid market share.

True Move has focused on driving the iPhone to tap affluent students and office workers.

This month, the University of the Thai Chamber of Commerce has given away iPhones to this year's batch of 600 Master of Business Administration students, so they can download university-related information and archived lessons as part of the school's mobile-learning project.

The devices will give students wireless access to the university and allow them to view clips of previous lessons.

True Move will allow the 600 students to download the data wirelessly free of charge for two years.