Financial Daily from THE HINDU group of publications
Friday, Aug 29, 2003
Financial Daily from THE HINDU group of publications Friday, Aug 29, 2003 |
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Info-Tech
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New Products & Services Bird forays with 4 handset models — Chinese firm hopes to have big slice of market Our Bureau
Mr K. P. Wong, MD, Bird International Ltd (China), launching mobile phones for the Indian market at a press conference in the Capital on Thursday. -- Kamal Narang
New Delhi , Aug. 28 BIRD International Ltd, the largest mobile phone manufacturer in China, has entered the domestic market by launching four GSM cellular models. It is targeting sales of three lakh units by 2004. Announcing this here on Thursday, Mr Jean-Alexis Chatelain, Director, Bird International, stated that the company was targeting an export of a close to million mobile handsets and expected 30-40 per cent of this to be diverted to India in 2004. The company has already appointed Agrani Convergence Ltd (ACL) and CD Services both for retail distribution and services.ACL has more than 50 stores for retailing telecom and IT products across the country. The entry level model S288 will cost Rs 5,500 and S1120 is priced at Rs 7,500. An exclusive ladies model SC04 which has multimedia messaging services and GPRS is priced at Rs 14,000 and V10 carries a tag Rs 12,000. Mr Chatelain noted that the company would launch another entry level model at sub Rs 4,000 level in October this year around festival time, even as it is planning to introduce CDMA handsets by January 2004. Among the other models in the pipeline are a PDA phone carrying voice, data and video scheduled to be launched later in the year in the range of Rs 15,000-Rs 20,000. "India is the second largest mobile market in the world and Bird through its product, value proposition and string partnership will build a large market share here within a year," he said. Among the unique features of these phones are the remote-control functions. The three SMS remote control functions comprise retrieval of missed calls, unread SMS messages and phone switch-offs activated by remote SMS message. The users of the handsets, in the event of forgetting the mobile instrument back at home while leaving for work, can either switch off or retrieve SMS messages and details of incoming calls by sending SMS, making use of handsets of any make equipped with any service. The company had sold seven million units in China in 2002 and six million handsets in the first half of the current calendar. It is looking at the possibility of setting up R&D centre in India, in addition to the four such centres in China.
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