FR: Move over Energizer Bunny, here’s Nabaztag!

It could be the dawn of the Wi-Fi rabbit era.The plastic bunny with ears like TV antennae can read out emails and mobile phone text messages, tell children to go to bed, alert one to a stock collapse and give traffic updates by receiving internet feeds via a wireless Wi-Fi network.

The bunny, which stands 23 cm tall and has a white cone-like body that lights up when it speaks, is called Nabaztag, which means rabbit in Armenian, its creator’s mother tongue. It can also wiggle its ears and sing songs.

French entrepreneur Rafi Haladjian, who conceived the idea, says the rabbit sometimes carries more sway over children than their parents and can help men who have misbehaved win forgiveness from angry partners.

Nabaztag costs 115 euros ($US148) in France, Â£80 ($US152) in Britain and $US150 in the United States. It is made in Shenzhen, China.

Since its market debut last year, 50,000 Nabaztags have been sold in France, Britain, Belgium and Switzerland, and Haladjian hopes to sell 150,000 by the end of this year.

Rafi Haladjian and his “Nabaztag”

The businessman is now looking to conquer the United States, where he only has a tiny presence, and is gearing up for the December holiday shopping season.A Beirut-native, Haladjian arrived in France as a teenager and studied linguistics. He entered the telecommunications industry in 1983, pioneered the first Internet Service Provider (ISP) in France in 1994, FranceNet, and in 2003, sold it to British Telecom. Many wouldâ€™ve retired, but Rafi thinks big. He founded two companies, Violet and Ozone, which are exploding the boundaries between technology and daily life.

â€œI was wondering what to do next. Then I found that the internet wasnâ€™t the last step in the evolution of the way we use things to access networks. In my opinion, pervasive networks and smart objects were the next step,â€ he says.

Last December, Haladjian appeared on CNN for three minutes and received 350,000 online information requests.