The Hindu Business Line : Motorola unveils low-cost handset

TAKING ON NOKIA: Mr Allen Burnes, Corporate Vice-President of Motorola, and the villagers who received the newly launched Motofone in the Capital on Tuesday. - Kamal Narang

New Delhi , Nov 28

In a bid to break Nokia's dominance in the Indian cellular phone market, Motorola today announced the global launch of its low-cost handset, Motofone, in the country.

Motorola is banking on the Motofone, its thinnest phone at about nine mm, to garner a higher share in the high-growth markets of India, West Asia, Africa and Turkey.

The handset, available for both GSM and CDMA technologies, will be designed and manufactured at Motorola's Indian unit. The GSM version is likely to be sold at Rs 1,600 through a bundled offering with Bharti Airtel, Idea Cellular and BSNL. The CDMA version is likely to be shipped by the end of 2006.

Through Motofone the company is seeking to build on the success of the Razr. One of the new features in the handset is the voice prompt in multiple languages, making it user-friendly for people who are illiterate or cannot read due to lack of vision. The voice prompt guides the user through the phone menu in English, Hindi, Tamil, Malayalam, Punjabi, Telugu, Bengali and Kannada. Other local languages will be added later.

Motofone has a high-contrast screen powered by ClearVision display, making it easier to use in sunlight. The handset comes with 500 minutes of talk time and 300 hours of standby time.

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