THE MOBILE phone invasion in the country is still far from over. Sending text messages every hour is just the beginning.

Even if you see a lot of Filipinos owning cellular phones, the mobile phone growth market, surprisingly, is just emerging in the Philippines at only 2.5-percent growth per annum.

For new players like Wintelecom Inc.--Bosch's Philippine distributor--competition with bigger players means targeting all segments of the market. And the major bulk of the market focuses on lifestyle, design, character and signature of these various segments.

"One of the hippest things right now is the prepaid service of most operators. Some of them hit the MTV generation. On our level we have to target not only (that generation) but also the housewives, the regular commuters who just need cellphones," says Christopher C. Uyco, Wintelecom Inc. vice president and general manager.

Uyco said whether from the low end, middle- or high-end segment, Bosch would cut across lifestyle trends.

"That's why if you see the phones right now--what with the number of features, the number of colors, choices, sizes--it's actually lifestyle-based," he said.

Uyco also said that the distinction between the corporate users from the MTV generation is how phones are being used. Businessmen usually make and receive voice calls while the youth occupy the text messaging segment.

Asked what differentiates the Philippine market from other countries, Uyco said that text messaging occupies a major percentage of sales in the country.

In countries such as Singapore and Hong Kong, Uyco said that text messaging is not that popular. Students in those countries carry cellphones because they want to call each other and not because they want to text each other.

"In other countries, they send sometimes only one or two messages and prefer calling rather than texting. I think one of the primary reasons (why it is popular here) is that text messaging was offered free here," Uyco said.

Asked about WAP technology (Wireless Application Protocol) where WAP-enabled phones will be able to surf the Internet and send and receive e-mail, Uyco said Bosch would soon introduce such devices.

"The only reason why we didn't introduce WAP technology this year is because all the GSM operators right now still do not support this feature," he said.

Early next year, Uyco added, most of the Bosch mobile phones will have the WAP feature implemented.

"WAP technology is a very prestigious segment but I honestly feel that students might not be able to access that at first because the Internet service is costly," he said.

At a WAP forum held recently, it was predicted that there would be 530 million wireless subscribers worldwide by year 2001. WAP-enabled phones include the Nokia 7110, Alcatel OneTouch, Siemens S25 and the Ericsson R380. WAP promises to make wireless data available soon to the mass market.