Videocon launches low cost phones in India

Videocon has tapped the Indian mobile consumer market once again with its latest series of Qruz V1425, V1424, and V1430. These new phones now take the number of mobile handsets launched by Videocon to twenty five. All these new models are dual SIM handsets.

The Qruz V1425 is a 100 Watt PMPO Music output phone with large speakers. It is aimed for the customers, who have a special liking for music. The phone with huge speakers sports cover mesh grill, VGA camera, 1200 mAH battery, an MP3 player, a high resolution 2 inch TFT screen, expandable memory of up to 4GB, 1000 Phonebook/500 SMS memory, along with an LED torch and a mobile tracker software. With all these specifications, the phone is priced at Rs 3,180.

The V 1430 is a dual SIM phone (GSM+GSM) that sports a VGA camera and video recorder. It comes with a 1.8 inch TFT screen, MP3 player with dedicated keys, Bluetooth and memory that is expandable up to 4 GB. The phone comes with a price tag of Rs 2,800.

The V 1424 comes with a gun metal lining and is a dual SIM phone (GSM+GSM) along with a VGA camera. It also has an MP3 player sans dedicated keys, expandable memory up to 2GB, 2 inch TFT screen, Bluetooth and a mobile tracker. This phone comes with a price tag of Rs 2,500.

Tata DOCOMO launches its 24X7 Live Chat Customer Services

In order to provide good customer service to all its prepaid and postpaid subscribers, Tata DOCOMO has recently come out with its new initiative which is known as “Live Chat Service”.

This latest service from DOCOMO will help the subscribers with their complaints, queries and requests through option of Live Chat. The services of Live Chat by the company will be available 24X7 for the convenience of the subscribers.

In order to avail the services of Live Chat, the subscribers will have to go to the website of the company which is www.tatadocomo.com and then select the option of “ Dive –In” and go to the “ Customer Care Section”.

Once the subscriber reaches the Chat service area he will have to fill the “Pre Chat Form” which will be then transferred in real time to the representative of the company.

The Head Marketing of Tata DOCOMO, Gurinder Singh Sandhu on the launch stated that this is the first of its type services in the industry of telecom and will prove to be very helpful for the customers and will save their time as well.

Five New Entry Level Handsets launched by Motorola

Motorola has recently made an addition to its existing range of MOTOYUVA brand with the launch of 5 new mobile phone models which will be the entry level handsets. These mobile phones are named as MOTOYUVA WX181, MOTOYUVA WX260, MOTOYUVA WX265, MOTOYUVA WX290 and MOTOYUVA WX295. These latest mobile phones will be loaded with all needed features like that of capturing images, texting, talking, listening to music and others at an affordable price.

The Motorola Devices & Home Vice president of Marketing, Andrew Morley stated that “The aim was to meet the changing needs of our Indian consumers and make mobile communication available to the widest possible audience.”

The recently launched MOTOYUVA WX range from the company will come loaded with features like Bluetooth, expandable memory up to 2GB so that you can store all your data, FM radio, digital camera, GPRS and integrated torch light.

These latest handsets from Motorola are launched with affordable price tags ranging between Rs.1490 to Rs.2890.

LAVA launches Alpha keypad phone

Lava International Ltd., one of the leading mobile handset brands in the country sets a new standard with its latest innovation. After months of market research and rigorous trials, Lava has succeeded in converting a consumer insight into a path-breaking innovation called Alpha keypad. This innovative key pad is neither traditional Multi-tap nor QWERTY; instead the keys are arranged in ABCD order to provide convenience for the users. The brand has come-up with anew business series handsets featuring the innovative key pad.

With this new innovation, Lava has also marked its entry into the burgeoning segment of business class phones in India. To begin with, it has introduced this unique keypad in its new B2 & B5 handsets. This is the first time that any mobile handset player has been able to offer an option to make life simple for a large segment of mobile users, who were not familiar or comfortable with QWERTY or Multi-tap keypads.

While introducing the innovative Alpha Key-pad, Mr. SN Rai, Co – Founder & Director, LAVA International Ltd. said “Lava always endeavored to introduce consumer insight driven innovations, which make people’s life simple. Last year Lava redefined consumer expectation with the introduction of KKT and A series phones. It took months of rigorous research and consumer trials to conceptualize Alpha Key-pad. We feel Alpha key-pad would further redefine the mobile phone market in a big way.”

“A market study done in the key cities of India to understand usage pattern revealed that there is a large group of consumer who crave for a business class phones but not comfortable in using the same. A further deep dive unfolded that these consumers find the existing QWERTY key-pad cumbersome to use and would be comfortable if the keys are arranged in their known alphabetical order”.




At present estimated 10% mobile handsets sold in India belong to Business class segment with QWERTY keys. Most brands in India have QWERTY keypad phone in the market or planning to come up with. Standing tall in this crowded market, LAVA is the first handset brand which has created a new segment introducing Alpha series phones and intend to capture 10% to 15% market share within this segment. Apart from the alpha key-pad lava also has option of QWERTY key-pad phone.

The concept behind Alpha key-pad phone is to make texting and e-mailing easier and faster. India has the largest number of people using sms and the Alpha keypad will go a long way to empower a very large segment of mobile users. Another benefit is to provide a user-friendly experience to increase adoptability of full key-pad phones at faster pace. The Alpha keypad is meant for those set of people, who are not familiar or comfortable with QWERTY key pad but aspire to have phone like this. Besides, individuals who require one-handed mobility will find this concept more helpful.

Mr Rai further elaborated, “Alpha key pad is one of the fine examples of Lava’s innovation in the Indian mobile handset industry. Very soon we are coming up with few more innovations which would herald a new era in this industry. We remain committed to being the first in deploying innovation & technology in the mobile handsets for consumers in India. With the launch of the new B series phones with Alpha key-pad, we seek to provide consumers with a completely different and comfortable mobile experience that has never been experienced by consumers anywhere.”

Always been the innovation leader, with the Alpha key pad concept LAVA is again establishing itself as the front-runner in consumer understanding. In 2009 when it started its operation it was the foremost company to bring a slew of functionality rich phones with the key benefits of Dual Sim and 30 days battery back-up. Carrying forward the same mission LAVA is coming up with new series of phones, which would rewrite the future of Indian Mobile Industry.

Price: Rs. 4, 399/-

Dual-SIM Mobile Phones Gaining Popularity in India

Demand for mobile phones that can accept two SIM (subscriber identity module) cards has picked up strongly in India, but Nokia, the dominant handset vendor in India, is late to the market.

Dual SIM phones currently account roughly for close to about 15 percent of mobile phones sales in the country, and the market is growing fast, said Anshul Gupta, principal research analyst at Gartner.

Nokia plans to launch its first dual-SIM phone, the Nokia C2, in India in the next few months.

Competitor Samsung said its dual-SIM phones, introduced in the second quarter of last year, will account for 12 to 15 percent of mobile phones sold by the company this year. That's up from about 8 percent of unit sales last year, said Ruchika Batra, a spokeswoman. The company is launching more dual-SIM models this year, she added.

The market is mainly driven by users who want to switch between carriers to take advantage of the best deals, said Gupta. Business and professional users may also use these phones to have a separate mobile number for personal and official calls, he added.

A large number of buyers of Samsung's dual SIM phones use the two SIMs on the phone to switch between network providers if coverage gets patchy, or when they are traveling between cities, Batra said.

The market for dual SIM mobile phones is dominated currently by locally branded phones, and phones from Chinese vendors selling into India, according to Gupta.

Such vendors are providing increasing competition for big-name players like Nokia, which had a 54.1 percent share of the India's 101.54 million-unit mobile phone market in 2009, according to research firm IDC India. The company's share is bound to go down as more vendors enter the Indian market, IDC India said in April.

Indian and Chinese vendors are making inroads at the low end of the Indian mobile phone market by offering a combination of features such as dual SIM, powerful speakerphones and a battery life of up to 30 days, Gupta said. These vendors have stripped some features, like the camera and Wi-Fi, from mobile phones to lower costs, and instead focused on features like long battery life which are so critical in rural markets, he added.

India had 617.5 million [m] mobile subscribers at the end of May, according to data from the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India.

Prepaid users eye more value for money

The mid-market mobile phone user segment has started moving up the value chain. Many of these users want services like broadband data, media content and other value added services.

"The number of people who come just for voice top-up is shrinking. Customers are increasingly looking at comprehensive packages," says Muktambha Prakash, proprietor of Maa Enterprises, a mobile top-up outlet in R T Nagar in Bangalore. Muralidharsa Meharwade, a recharge retailer on M G Road, says pre-paid customers are asking for more voice, data and other services, all bundled. "Earlier, prepaid used to have a low-end connotation, but that's changing," says Meharwade.

Vodafone is offering 50MB of free mobile internet browsing bundled with every prepaid SIM. Data packs include 2GB usage for Rs 95 with a 30 day validity; 200MB for Rs 16 with a 3 day validity. Vodafone is scheduled to launch a slew of new bundled products in the coming weeks.

RCOM launched Buzz comes with a first recharge at Rs 66, with a talk time of Rs 40, one year validity, 500 SMS a day free for a year, and 40% off on GPRS for 12 months. Airtel offers a package at Rs 45, with talk time worth Rs 30, validity of 30 days, and 100 MB free data usage. For a recharge of Rs 109, the customer gets a talk time worth Rs 90 and 100MB free data. Another comes with a Rs 50 recharge, that gives Rs 41 talk time, 10 SMS free for seven days and Radio Mirchi live on mobile for seven days.

"Expect a decline in growth of voice revenue from 2010 by 2014-end, although this will be balanced by increased revenue from data services which will significantly contribute to the overall growth of mobile services in India," says Neha Gupta, senior research analyst in Gartner.

K Sankara Narayanan, CEO of Vodafone Karnataka, says that within three years, more than 50% of its subscribers would use mobile wireless services. "A majority of the new users are accessing the internet for the first time via their mobile phones," he said.

Dell to Launch Mobile Phones in India

Dell will very soon be launching their mobile products in India. Dell has just launched a major advertising campaign in a lot of local newspapers for their mobile phones.

There are reports that Dell is working on a Windows Phone 7 based device called the Dell Lightning but we don’t know if this is real, so expect this in the Indian launch.

Everyone knows that the mobile market in India is very large and they are very sensitive about the price. Thus, it will be hard for Dell to compete with Nokia and Blackberry, unless they have a a nice range of mobile products.

HP Labs launches 'SiteonMobile'

HP Labs India on Thursday announced the launch of ‘SiteonMobile’, a technology to make Internet content and services available to the masses even from low-end mobile phones. It is a new cloud service that enables Internet to be accessed using SMS and voice.

The solution enables portal owners to design mobile applications and extend their reach from 60 million Internet users to more than 600 million mobile phone users. The cloud service developed by the India research team at HP Labs includes a solution for rapid creation of mobile applications.

For users in developing countries, mobile phones are expected to deliver their first Internet experience. However, more than 50 per cent of the phones sold in India are ultra-low-end and less than 3 per cent are Internet enabled. There is a strong need to deliver the value of Internet experiences on low-end devices used by users in emerging markets like India.

‘SiteonMobile’ is a solution to deliver Internet content and services over SMS and Voice to non-tech savvy consumers. The solution enables task-based personal web interactions. Instead of delivering a complete web page to a mobile phone, the solution delivers only the short content relevant to the user’s task. It is built around a concept of TaskLets that represents the interactions for a user’s specific web task. In addition to mobile phones, even those owning the PCs can run TaskLets by clicking the corresponding widgets on their computer screens. Since the TaskLets reside in the cloud they can be accessed from anywhere from any device.

There are several small and medium businesses in India that have invested in an e-commerce web portal for their business, but their portal is not much accessed by their end consumers today.

The SiteOnMobile solution enables such website owners to define specific tasks on their website and make those tasks easily accessible to their customers using low-end mobile phones. This is valuable even for simple tasks that their customers need such as to check status of an order, request for cab service, request for a quotation, booking a doctor’s appointment, and so on.

“We are ready with the portal-based solution where website owners can create TaskLets for the services. We received positive response from select businesses whom we approached to partner with us. They not only agreed to use our platform, but also offered to enhance their web portals to offer services they wished to make available through mobile phones but hadn’t been able to invest time, money and resources for it so far,” said Sudhir Dixit, Director, HP Labs India.

It is an “invitation only” model where only selected customers will be allowed to create TaskLets. Interested content owners can send in their request to access the solution on the portal, giving a brief description of their website.

Oscar Launched Mobile Phones In India

OSCAR a well known consumer electronics brand announced Mobile Phones in Indian markets. Oscar mobiles will be start 1st in North and East India with 10 handsets priced between Rs. 1700 to Rs. 4500.

Other areas will be launched in coming months. All the models will offer some additional feature that no other brand currently offers at that price range.

Oscar has established its brand value in the consumer electronics industry by unleashing the value-for-money market & introducing a perfect combination of price-to-features in its products in last 25 years of work. OSCAR offer large range of product in categories like CTVs, DVDs, Home Theatre Systems and Multi-media speaker systems.

The model N1 has a vibration speaker, a first for an entry level phone at that price point. The higher end model is Z1 which is an aspirational Qwerty Keypad Handset is based on a very fast processor and comes with a front and back camera, unheard of at that price point! Apart from the entry level N1, most Oscar mobiles will come loaded with plethora of multimedia options including FM Radio, MP3, MP4 player, access to various social networking sites, excellent quality 1.3 MP camera among others giving distinctly superior pictures.

All mobile phone by Oscar support to Dual SIM GSM connectivity to allow customers to manage their personal and professional numbers efficiently, and come with a 1 year warranty and backed by a comprehensive after- sales service with an existing network of over 250 service centres. Available at 1,500 retail shops across East and North India, the network will touch 8,000 retail points by end of year.


The multimedia models have the distinction of video without breaks or jerks which provides the best viewing experience) and long life battery (some of the models have up to 30 days of standby because of the special 1800 – 2000 mAh battery used.

Mr. Satish Verma, Chairman, Oscar Group said,“Our foray into the telecom vertical is in keeping with our vision to provide consumers with high quality products at unmatched prices by following a no-frills policy. Our vision is to introduce the most affordable handsets in India keeping in mind the features to price ratio”. “Currently about 50% of Indians are on ULCH (ultra low cost handsets). We therefore saw a great opportunity for OSCAR which has a strong track record in the Value for Money (VFM) segment. We will look to build a strong presence in the semi-urban and rural market, where the prominence of both subscribers and operators is rapidly increasing, besides the burgeoning urban market”.

Mr. Suresh Wadhwani Executive Director said, “By end of first year, we hope to sell one lakh mobiles per month in North & East India with a turnover of Rs. 250 crores and thereafter grow at 15-20% annually. In five years, we are aiming to reach a turnover of 1000 crores.”

Top Five Mostly Used Mobile Phones in India

Mobile phones are becoming part of a person's life. Back in late 90's, mobile phone was a luxury and only "Rich" people could afford it but now time has changed and even the tea stall owner or rickshaw driver can afford a mobile phone. I think to have a mobile phone in India is now a necessity.

India is pumping millions of mobile subscribers every month and now I think India has more mobile subscribers than landlines. So what mobile phones are popular in India?

Recently, Opera released a report for Opera Mini revealing the top 10 sites accessed from cell phones and also, the top 10 handsets used for accessing the sites. Here’s the list of the top 5 mobile phones used in India as per Opera Mini’s report for June 2008 –

• Nokia N70
• Nokia N73
• Nokia 6233
• Nokia 6600
• Nokia 3110c
  

As you can see, only Nokia handsets are in the top 5 and this shows the dominance of Nokia in Indian market. That being said, these five phones are equipped with a number of basic features. These five phones are also available at reasonable prices and maybe this is the reason why they are so popular among Indian users.

Mobile Phones With Free Gifts offers you More Than your Expectation

A mobile phone or a cell phone is a long range, portable electronic device that is used for mobile communication. A cell phone uses a network of specialised base stations known as cell sites. Current mobile phones come equipped with a number of useful applications like Instant Messaging, Internet Access, Camera and Hands Free. The third generation (3G) mobile phones were first commercially launched in Japan in 1990. Due to advances in technology, cell phones have become increasingly compact over a period of time.

Currently, the Nokia Corp. is the largest manufacturer of mobile phones in the world. The company has a current global mobile phone market share of approximately 36 percent. Africa has the largest growth rate of cell phone subscribers in the world. Over 6 million cell phones are sold in India in a month alone. The country expects to reach up to 500 million subscribers by the end of 2010. These days, the cell phones can also be custom decorated to reflect the owner’s personality.

Gone are the days when only high profile business people and executives could afford to own a mobile phones. These days, mobile phones have become very common. Be it a student, home maker or an executive, everyone keeps a cell phone with him or her these days. Mobile phones industry is a multi billion dollar industry today. The success of many businesses depend upon the efficient utilisation of mobile phone services. In fact, there is a large number of people who cannot spend a single day without using a mobile phone.

Mobile phones keep one in touch with her or his near and dear ones at all times. These devices come quite handy in an emergency situation. One can always inform about his emergency to the police, family members or his friends with the help of a cell phone. Most high end mobile phones these days come equipped with a video camera and a Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver. A GPS receiver helps in locating the exact position of the mobile phone user.

Retailers across the UK are offering attractive free gifts with branded mobile phones to the consumers to increase their usage. These free gifts could include goodies like free talk time, free text messages and subsidised call rates. Some of them will also give consumers costly gifts like a Nintendo Wii or Sony PlayStation gaming console when one purchases a high end mobile phone from them. Many retailers also give cash back offers on some selected handsets. Still others will insure the user’s handset for free for a limited period of time. Some may even offer a free handset as a gift to the users.

The free gifts with mobile phones are a relatively new trend. The manufactures offer free gifts to the users with cell phones to increase the sale of their devices. UK based mobile network service providers like Orange, Virgin and Vodafone have come up with many innovative mobile phone deals. Such deals help these network service providers to increase their subscription base.

Free gifts with mobile phones have become so popular that people always look for them before purchasing a new handset. World’s leading manufacturers of mobile phones like Nokia, Samsung and Sony Ericsson have come up with many new models of cell phones in past few years. Some of the highly capable handsets launched by these manufacturers during past few years include Sony Ericssson W850i, Nokia 8800 Sapphire Arte and Samsung U100. Retailers in the UK are offering free gifts like Apple iPod, laptops and XBox 360 Elite gaming console with these handsets.

One may also opt to purchase a Contract Mobile phone or a Pay As You Go Mobile phone. These handsets come with attractive mobile phone deals. One may get a lot of incentives under these deals. One may also search the internet to know more about the free gifts offered by various online retailers in the UK. 12 months free line rental is the latest deal that is gaining popularity among the people in the UK. In fact, a large number of people these days purchase only that handset which is offered with some free gift.

LG Launches Mobile Phone App Store

LG has announced the launch of mobile phone app store to cater all the smartphone users as well as feature phones.

The latest LG Application Store bears over 3,000 applications meant for all mobile phones.

According to sources, the site contains games such as The SIMS 3 and Asphalt 4 and other applications for all the featured phones and smartphones.

Apart from that, LG is also planning to bring Android applications to the platform in the coming days.

A company official said LG can grab a good percentage of the mobile phone market as many companies are focusing on the development of applications for smartphones ignoring the feature phones.

Most of the applications found at the LG Application Store are designed for use on feature phones, the official added.

LG has been buoyed by a recent report published by research firm that predicts 90% of feature phone owners in the US and UK are willing to download games, social networking applications, instant messaging and mapping on their sets.