INQ Mobile Planning "Twitterphone" Later This Year

Sure, smartphones have had Twitter clients for ages now, but cell maker INQ Mobile to plans to bring Twitter to the masses via an Internet-enabled Twitter-capable phone.

Microblogging service Twitter has been aiming at mobile phones since its inception—in fact, the service’s infamous 140 character messages stem from the limits on text messages sent from mobile phones. But while devices like the iPhone and other smartphones have long had “native” Twitter clients that let users send and manage tweets, ordinary phone users have been kinda stuck with sub-standard (and often costly) text-message based tweeting.

INQ Mobile wants to change that, announcing plans to offer a mass-market phone with a built-in Twitter client…and that client would pull and send tweets via the Internet, rather than using text messages.

INQ Mobile is currently best known for its Skype-capable moble handsets, which have sales approaching three quarters of a million units. The company also recently launched the INQ1, also known as the “Facebook phone,” which won the best handset award at the Mobile World Congress show in Barcelona in February.

INQ Mobile hasn’t announced pricing or definitive plans for its Twitter phone, but said it expects it to launch with another new handset in time for the end-of-year holiday buying season.