KEY POINTS:
At a technology exhibition in Barcelona, a beautiful Korean model stands amid dozens of suited businessmen, clutching a handkerchief.
The model works for Korean electronics maker LG, and the handkerchief is there for wiping fingerprints off the object of everyone's attention - LG's new mobile phone, the Shine.
The major selling point of the sleek device is that when in standby mode, its face forms a perfect mirror. It's impressive to look at, as long as it's not smudged with fingerprints.
LG sold 78 million mobile phones last year, but it wants a larger slice of the European and US handset markets and is attempting to overhaul its image to better appeal to Western consumers and in the process, take on rivals Nokia, Sony Ericsson and Motorola.
The result is a new line of upmarket phones quite unlike anything LG has produced before.
First came the Chocolate, an angular, black mobile with touch-sensitive keys. It was a hit last year in the US and went on sale here a couple of months ago. LG plans to have sold 10 million Chocolates by mid-year.
The Shine was in response to research that showed mobile users like their phones wrapped in shiny metal, says Jae Bae, LG's executive vice-president. LG wants to sell five million Shines this year. But its ultimate move to take its brand upmarket led it to strike a deal with Italian fashion house Prada.
The Prada phone steals the Apple iPhone's thunder by being the first mobile to go on sale that has no keyboard - everything is controlled using touch screen icons.
"It's not another fashion company marrying for a few months with a consumer electronics company to brand a product," Giacomo Ovidi, Prada's business development manager, told the Herald on Sunday.
"We're interested in making money, but the first objective was to do it our way."
Prada's tie-up with LG came only after the fashion house was given extensive input into the phone's design. Other companies wanted the Prada name but weren't willing to collaborate on building it. "At least five telephone companies have said to us, 'You brand the phone, we make a good phone, we'll share the revenue'. I always said no," Ovidi says.
As well as the overall look of the phone, Ovidi says, Prada's Milan and Tuscany-based designers helped design the screen layout, and Prada's music composer supplied ringtones and musical effects.
Other phones in LG's line-up pack in features, but the common theme to the more style-driven phones is minimalism, inside and out.
"We used a very large LCD screen. It represents the total look because [the LG Prada] had to have a great graphical user interface," says Bae.
Teams of LG and Prada designers shuttled between Asia and Europe until the plans for the Prada phone were right. It will sell at a premium through Prada's stores in Europe and Asia, not through mobile operators, as is usually the case.
The aim is not to make the LG Prada a multi-million selling mass-market phone but to build a name for good design.
"We're not keen to compete directly with the iPhone," says Bae of the highly anticipated music phone of which Apple boss Steve Jobs wants to sell 10 million next year.
"We've different reasons for developing this phone."
