MANILA, Philippines -- The mobile phone business in the Philippines is largely being sustained by the entry-level market. Phones nowadays must have a mass appeal to stay in the industry so manufacturers have to make their phones as cheap as possible, usually below the P5,000 to P6,000.

However, Motorola said it has found a small but growing area in the mass market segment that is looking for more sophistication in their somewhat dull basic phones. These types of users are starting to demand multimedia functionalities in their phones.

"People, even with a tight budget, still want their phones to be as functional as the more expensive phones they wish they had. This is the market we're trying to address," said Mari Litonjua, Motorola Philippines marketing director for sub-regions.

Litonjua was speaking to journalists at the launch of their next line of mobile phones, all of which are basic models of some of their existing products. He said people will be bound to want phones that have multimedia functions, especially those that have radio and digital music playback capabilities and, if possible, basic photo functions.

"Not only do they want their phones to perform well but they want these to look good as well," Litonjua said.

The company presented five new phones, all of which are entry-level models of their different product segments. These will be launched in the third quarter of the year with a starting price of P3,000.

The latest entry-level music phone is the W388, which is an updated version of Motorola's successful W300 series. The phone can accommodate microSD cards up to 2 gigabytes in size and has an easy drag-and-drop feature allowing basic users to just copy music files into the phone from a computer. The W388 also has an FM radio function, speakerphone and digital camera function.

The MOTOZINE ZN5 and the ZN200 are Motorola's camera phones. The ZN200 is the basic unit in the lineup. It has a 2 megapixel digital camera with 8x digital zoom. It can capture video in MPEG-4 format and a 30 MB internal memory to save files. Nevertheless, it can be installed with a 2Gb microSD card.

Meanwhile the ZN5 is the top model in the MOTOZINE series. It has a 5 megapixel digital camera with additional lighting adjustment functions, as well as capture modes and photo editing effects. Kodak provided the Kodak Gallery software and an image enhancement engine. The ZN5 can be installed with a microSD card up to 4 Gb. This also has a Wifi connectivity function allowing the phone to access the Internet and connect to the Kodak Gallery online service for quick uploading of photos.

One of the two entry-level phones for the higher market segment is the MOTO A810, which is a small touch-sensitive PDA phone. This model has a 2 megapixel camera that can record photos and videos (3GPP and MPEG-4 format). The phone features EDGE cellular technology allowing it to browse the Internet. The touch-screen of the A810 is also one of the smallest in the market at 2.2-inches.

Motorola also introduced the MOTOROKR EM30, its basic ROKR phone. It is the second after the ROKR E8 to integrate the Mode Shift technology wherein the touch-sensitive keypad can transform from alphanumeric to handheld music player functions. It can support microSD cards up to 8 Gb.