Acer India today said it would start phone manufacturing at its Pondicherry unit in India.
This will not be a full-component manufacturing unit but an assembly line which has a monthly capacity of 100,000 units. To start the assembly line, Acer has invested $8.5 to $10 million.
“The plant will be operational by December 2015 and as the demand for the smartphones increase, the investment and production capacity of the plant will also be scaled up appropriately,” said Harish Kohli, managing director of Acer India.
Acer is targeting sales of nearly 250,000 units per quarter.
The company, which is also one of the key laptop and PC players in the country, said that it was also interested in wearables.
“The entry of wearables and other phones be it Windows or Android will depend on the performance of the two phones that we launched today. I do not see an immediate opportunity here but within the next 18 months our wearables might hit the country,” said ST Liew, president of Acer’s smartphone business group.
Acer, which has over 75 exclusive stores and 200 multi-brand stores, could easily start selling offline.
Acer has launched two smartphones — Liquid 630s for Rs 10,999 and and Liquid 530 for Rs 6,999 in an exclusive partnership with Flipkart.
The company also said that the newly launched phones could be serviced at 160 cities in India.
“We were into the pilot mode before to understand market dynamics and consumer psyche and as soon as we were ready we launched,” S. Rajandran, chief marketing officer, Acer India.
While the Liquid Z630s will come with a 5.5-inch display, a 64-bit octa-core processor and 3 GB DDR3 RAM and 4,000mAh battery, the Liquid Z530 comes with eight-megapixel front camera, 84 degree wide view angle with the bright magic selfie feature.
IANS
