Hutchison Whampoa Ltd. is taking the wraps off its new handset subsidiary, INQ Mobile, this week and hopes to pick up where others have left much to desire. Coming from a carriers’ point of view, the company doesn’t hide the fact it wants as many customers as possible to access content on their mobile devices. Jeff Taylor, co-founder of INQ: “As an industry we’ve all failed to do it. I think a lot of that is because of the devices we’ve given users to access the internet on.” While the industry has succeeded at getting lower-priced feature phones into the hands of billions, the “internet stinks on those phones,” he told mocoNews. “We just think that’s dumb. We think there’s a much better way to do it.”

Hutchison isn’t entirely new to the handset space, having released two Skype-phones. But this go around it’s making a concerted push into the game with an emphasis on mobile social networking and a simple user interface built on the Brew platform with a custom set of APIs that can also run Java. The INQ1, which will be the company’s first device, is expected to go on sale next month in the U.K. and Australia for about $210 with relatively little carrier subsidy. INQ plans to keep prices low as it readies up to three more devices, including a QWERTY handset, for next year. Comparing the cellphone business to the automobile industry, Taylor said “we’re the sporty hatch-back. I’m comfortable building more and more hatch-backs for the time being.” A major component of INQ’s device set is the applications it’s made native to the phone such as Facebook, Windows Live Messenger, eBay (NSDQ: EBAY), Last.fm, Skype, Google (NSDQ: GOOG) and Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO). All of the users’ login information will be saved on the device to keep them logged in. Taylor: “For a carrier it stimulates communication, which is the business we’re in. We’re not in the business to rip people off… We really want to force change through the industry through this device.” A U.S. launch won’t happen until INQ secures an exclusive carrier agreement, something it doesn’t foresee happening until next summer.