PRAGUE (AFP) -- A plucky Czech company has entered the battle between mobile phone operators and fixed line companies with a product it hopes to find a niche for in foreign markets.

JabloCOM has invested heavily in developing a GSM desktop mobile phone, sometimes dubbed the world's biggest mobile phone, as a weapon for mobile operators to invade fixed phone company strongholds: Homes and offices.

The firm, sited at Jablonec, not far from Germany and Poland, launched its redesigned and updated desktop phone recently, one year after the first model was unveiled to a sceptical public.

The desktop mobile phone looks like a normal office phone but is designed to be transportable and has a large QWERTY keyboard and LCD display for incoming and outgoing messages. Its selling points are both mobility and ease of use.

"People laughed in my face," said JabloCOM managing director, Jiri Meloun, remembering the launch of the product.

Parent company Jablotron increased its 2005 sales to 800 million koruna (28 million euros, 33.9 million dollars) from around 500 million koruna a year earlier, largely thanks to orders for the GSM desktop phone.

European mobile operators in Portugal, Germany, Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Poland ordered the first model, partly marketed as a more user-friendly device for elderly people than conventional mobile phones.

Unwilling to divulge figures, Meloun would only say that 10,000 models were sold last year on the Czech market.

The potential market for the new model is in the "hundreds of thousands," he predicts, highlighting a re-design and adaptations targeting the office environment.

But Meloun admits the battle to become a strategic piece of hardware in mobile operators' fight against fixed rivals is far from won. Desktop mobile phones are still an alien concept in many parts of Europe.

"If you asked someone in Switzerland what is a GSM desktop phone, they would not even understand the concept," he said.

Meloun cites the example of Orange Slovakia, majority-owned by France Telecom, which heavily promoted the desktop mobile phone from February, 2005.

Telecom market analysts, for whom fixed-to-mobile transfer and fixed-mobile convergence are buzzwords, were cautious about JabloCOM's chances.

The head of the telecoms division of market analysis company, IDC, in Prague, John Gole, described desktop mobile phones aimed at offices and homes as "an interesting idea". "It is not completely moving in step with industry trends, but that does not mean that it is wrong," he commented. "Mobile companies are now competing in markets that are more and more saturated."

Big corporations are already targeted with special offers by mobile operators and companies can even simply give out mobiles to staff on the back of such offers, he added.

"There is also a question about quality of service. GSM customers get used to lower connection quality as a trade off for mobility but that does not hold so much in the office environment," Gole added.

A survey this year for British telecom consultant Analysts Research suggests that the home market is ripe for new offers.

Eighteen and 21 percent of survey respondents respectively in France and Germany said they wanted to use mobiles all the time if the price was right.

Skirmishes have stepped up on the home market between mobile and fixed companies.

Mobile phone giants Vodafone and O2 launched "home zone" cheap mobile packages in Germany last year to entice callers to drop their fixed lines.

In Britain, fixed line operator BT last year started offering a mobile phone that connects to the fixed network at home.

Jablotron, which started with four people in 1990 and now employs around 250 Czechs producing phone, security equipment and medical devices, claims a successful track record in making the right calls.

If it is proved right this time round, a joint venture partner in China is ready to launch mass production of its desktop phone.