Homegrown phone vendor Micromax on Wednesday said it has partnered with Taiwanese chipset maker MediaTek to design and develop smartphones for its new “in” brand.

Earlier this month, Micromax announced its new “in” sub-brand and said it was looking at investing ₹500 crore over next 12-18 months towards R&D, marketing and sprucing up manufacturing as it seems to make a comeback in the Indian market and take on Chinese giants like Xiaomi.

The company is expected to launch its first device under the new brand in the first week of November.

Micromax is collaborating with MediaTek to design and develop smartphone solutions powered by MediaTek Helio G Series with MediaTek HyperEngine game technology, a statement said on Wednesday.

“Micromax R&D Centre at Bengaluru will start the design and development of smartphones as a part of their ‘Make-in-India’ initiatives with their new ‘in’ range of smartphones. This association uniquely aligns the efforts of Micromax to accelerate the complete hardware and software development for smartphones in India,” it added.

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Rahul Sharma, the co-founder of Micromax, said the company’s R&D in India will use the latest technologies and the advanced MediaTek Helio G Series chips, which deliver premium performance and enhanced customer experiences.

“Software development has always been the strength of the Indian ecosystem and we will leverage that strength in our software design. Special focus on Kernel, Connectivity, Multimedia, and Telephony will provide an enhanced experience of the core Android operating system,” he added.

Sharma said Micromax team will be using these chipsets to develop the upcoming smartphones at its R&D centre in India.

“MediaTek has been focussing on enabling superior gaming capabilities with the entire range of G series chips,” Anku Jain, Managing Director of MediaTek India, said.

“This year itself, we have launched MediaTek Helio G95, G85, G80, G70, G35, and G25 chips, with MediaTek HyperEngine Game technology featuring an array of technologies from vivid visuals, rapid sensing touchscreens, premium picture quality, enhanced power efficiency and internet connectivity for a longer gameplay,” he said.

Enabling a highly responsive user experience, the technology facilitates a smooth and lag-free connection during gaming while ensuring intelligent and dynamic management of the CPU, GPU, and memory, he added.

Once a market leader, Micromax lost its position to players like Xiaomi, Oppo and Vivo as these Chinese giants captured the Indian market with their aggressively priced smartphones and massive marketing spends.

However, with supply chain disruption due to Covid-19 and growing anti-China sentiment, Chinese smartphone brands saw their market share in India fall to 72 per cent in the June 2020 quarter from 81 per cent in the preceding three months (as per Counterpoint Research).

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