Psion PLC launched its first Chinese language palmtop to address a market that analysts estimate grew beyond 3 million units in 2000 on the 25 June 2001.

Based on the Symbian operating system, the Psion 618C has all the features of the original Revo and is available in two distinct versions, Simplified and Traditional. For the Taiwanese and Hong Kong markets, the Traditional version offers five Chinese input methods including Zhu Yin, Chang Jie, Pin Yin and Handwriting Recognition. For Mainland China, the Simplified version with three input methods including Pin Yin and Handwriting Recognition.

“This is the largest emerging market for PDAs and it is growing at 75 per cent per year, ” says Charles Cousins, Regional Director for Psion Asia Pacific. “For both consumers and corporate clients alike, a local language version of the Psion has been on the wish list for quite some time. We now expect to make significant inroads into these new markets.”

With over 13,000 Chinese characters built-in, the 618C has Chinese-English and English-Chinese dictionaries with intelligent word association and learning dictionaries for faster input .The Psion 618C is enabled for Chinese SMS messaging and is compatible with most of the leading GSM mobile phones. Supplied with PsionLink software for backup, installation of software and restoration of data from a PC, the Psion 618C has 8MB of RAM, e-mail connectivity and a compact keyboard.