MagCom was a

Norwegian Norwegian, Norwayan, or Norsk may refer to: *Something of, from, or related to Norway, a country in northwestern Europe *Norwegians, both a nation and an ethnic group native to Norway *Demographics of Norway *The Norwegian language, including the ...

manufacturer of cellular

GSM The Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) is a standard developed by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) to describe the protocols for second-generation ( 2G) digital cellular networks used by mobile devices such as ...

handsets. The company, located in

Oslo Oslo ( , , or ; sma, Oslove) is the capital and most populous city of Norway. It constitutes both a county and a municipality. The municipality of Oslo had a population of in 2022, while the city's greater urban area had a population of ...

, was founded in 1999. In its various phases, around 200 million NOK were invested in the company. Insight Capital Partners, Telenor Venture and Anders Wilhelmsen AS were the largest investors. The company's single product was the triple band MagCom cellular phone, on sale from April 2001. In the months before the phone became available for purchase, most of the major IT-related media were ecstatic about the new phone, extensively hyping it. Some publications even claiming it would revolutionize the industry. When the phone finally became available for sale, it had already been delayed. Due to this, expectations had grown even higher, and much was expected in terms of functionality and technology. When the phone was launched, it had features that at the time were quite sophisticated: * Large black and white LCD screen with 64000 pixels, giving room for 27 lines of text. * User upgradable software * Web browser with

HTML The HyperText Markup Language or HTML is the standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser. It can be assisted by technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and scripting languages such as JavaScri ...

support * Email (

SMTP The Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) is an Internet standard communication protocol for electronic mail transmission. Mail servers and other message transfer agents use SMTP to send and receive mail messages. User-level email clients typical ...

and

POP3 In computing, the Post Office Protocol (POP) is an application-layer Internet standard protocol used by e-mail clients to retrieve e-mail from a mail server. POP version 3 (POP3) is the version in common use, and along with IMAP the most common p ...

) * Full calendar, appointment and address book, that could be synchronized with

Microsoft Outlook Microsoft Outlook is a personal information manager software system from Microsoft, available as a part of the Microsoft Office and Microsoft 365 software suites. Though primarily an email client, Outlook also includes such functions as Calen ...

* Automatic clock adjustment over

Network Time Protocol The Network Time Protocol (NTP) is a networking protocol for clock synchronization between computer systems over packet-switched, variable- latency data networks. In operation since before 1985, NTP is one of the oldest Internet protocols in c ...

(NTP) One of the features promoted, was that the

magnesium Magnesium is a chemical element with the symbol Mg and atomic number 12. It is a shiny gray metal having a low density, low melting point and high chemical reactivity. Like the other alkaline earth metals (group 2 of the periodic ta ...

material used for the casing, as well as the form factor, resulted in an exceptionally low

specific absorption rate Specific absorption rate (SAR) is a measure of the rate at which energy is absorbed per unit mass by a human body when exposed to a radio frequency (RF) electromagnetic field. It can also refer to absorption of other forms of energy by tissue, incl ...

(SAR) for the handset. The value of 0.043 W/kg was rather significantly lower than the legal limit at the time, 2.0 in Europe and 1.6 in the US. In the initial software release, the browser supported

pages, but not WAP. Later upgrades of the support did include support for

WAP WAP or Wap may refer to: Music * "WAP" (song), a 2020 song by Cardi B featuring Megan Thee Stallion Organizations * Weatherization Assistance Program, for US energy costs * Western Australia Party, a political party founded in 2016 * Western A ...

pages. Although several software updates were released, sales remained low, resulting in financial problems for the company. Even releasing information about an upcoming new and improved model failed to help the company secure additional financial support. The production was halted early in August 2001, and the company was bought by the Norwegian company

Q-Free Q-Free ASA () is a supplier of Tolling, Parking, Traffic Management and Connected ITS (C-ITS)/Connected Vehicle solutions with headquarters in Trondheim, Norway. The company has approximately 380 employees with 17 offices around the world and has ...

in September 2001.Q-Free buys mobile phone company
from

NRK NRK, an abbreviation of the Norwegian ''Norsk Rikskringkasting Aksjeselskap, AS'', generally expressed in English as the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation, is the Norwegian government-owned radio and television public broadcasting company, and ...

, in

. The company was from then on named Q-Free MagCom, and continued as a separate entity for around a year, after which the production of phones ceased.

References

Defunct mobile phone manufacturers Telecommunications companies established in 1999 Defunct companies of Norway Technology companies disestablished in 2001 1999 establishments in Norway