25 August 2014 | 15:53

Kazakh smartphone produced in China may enter international market

Akytbek Sherizatuly. Personal file photo.

Zerde smartphone designed by Kazakhs from Urumqi, China may enter the international market. The chief of Altyn Saka company producing Zerde smartphones Akytbek Sherizatuly shared his plans with Tengrinews.

Zerde smartphone designed by Kazakhs from Urumqi, China may enter the international market. The chief of Altyn Saka company producing Zerde smartphones Akytbek Sherizatuly shared his plans with Tengrinews.

500 Zerde smartphones were sold in one month after the release. The phone’s price ranges from $50 to $100.

Mr. Sherizatuly lives and works in Urumqi, China. "We want to come to Kazakhstan in September-October and to present our invention to the country’s government. We also plan to register Zerde trademark and Altyn Saka company," Mr. Sherizatuly said, “At this point we are working on adding Cyrillic scripts to the smartphone's OS so that Kazakhstan citizens can use it. (...) The interest to this smartphone is high: a lot of people discuss it in online forums trying to find out where to purchase it. We would like to present Zerde smartphones at the EXPO-2017 in Astana. We look forward to getting support of a relevant ministry in Kazakhstan.”

Kazakhstan's Ambassador to China Nurlan Yermekbayev in Beijing is very supportive of the Kazakh creators of Zerde smartphone. He said that if Mr. Sherizatuly sent a letter to the embassy, diplomatic mission would then forward it to Kazakhstan's Ministry and request their support. "There are various options we could consider. They can open a manufacturing plant in Astana, for example. They should send the letter," Nurlan Yermekbayev said.

The new smartphone was produced in Urumqi. The smartphone is a brainchild of one-year research of two IT professionals.

Zerde is an Android phone available in black and white colors. It has an 8-core processor, a 5mp front camera and a memory of 8, 16 or 32 GB. The screen has a 1280p resolution. The design of Zerde is similar to that of Huawei smartphones.

Additional battery can be purchased for $16.

The phone supports a number of languages along with the Kazakh language. Like many other smartphones, Zerde has a variety of applications ranging from ebook reader to language learning apps. Applications can be downloaded from Play Market.

Reporting by Roza Yesenkulova, writing by Assel Satubaldina

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