Telecom Lead Asia: CDMA/GSM service provider Reliance Communications is set to bring Lenovo-branded smart phones in India.
This is also a major entry for Lenovo phones in India, which is strengthening its presence in China, the world’s largest mobile market based on subscribers.
Recently, Lenovo said it gained 4.7 percent market share in the Chinese smartphone market in the third quarter. Current market share of Lenovo stands at 12.3 percent in China.
Liu Jun, president, Lenovo Business Group, said: “The Indian smart-phone market represents solid growth opportunities where CDMA / GSM smart-phone penetration is still low. With this partnership, we aim to replicate our China success and gain market share in the booming smart-phone market in India.”
During the third quarter, Lenovo announced that it would begin selling smartphones in Russia, in addition to previously announced India, Indonesia, Philippines and Vietnam. These five countries plus China, represent 44 percent of the world’s population, and give Lenovo a strong sales presence in these important emerging economies.
Lenovo said its Mobile Internet and Digital Home (MIDH) revenue, which includes its smartphone, tablet and smart TV businesses, accounted for 11 percent of company revenue in Q3, up 77 percent year over year.
The attractively priced smartphones will work on CDMA and GSM networks simultaneously. Users will benefit from the use of the Reliance Dual Core network as they switch calls between the two networks automatically.
Reliance Communications is looking at grabbing customers who want to use the widest footprint of High Speed Data network of Reliance Communications.
Lenovo-branded products and customer plans will be available across 2500 Reliance stores and 1000 Lenovo stores.
The Reliance Lenovo co-branded smartphones will operate on the latest Android operating system with a dual core 1 GHz processor that supports all latest applications and comes with a strong battery life.
Gurdeep Singh, president & CEO – Wireless Business, Reliance Communications, said: “In line with our endeavour to develop the CDMA device ecosystem, the co-branded smart-phones are set to offer a superlative customer experience in terms of device, speed and coverage on our high speed data network offering the widest footprint across the country.”