Idea Cellular, which has launched four 3G handsets last year, has now decided to tap a newer segment.
The firm, which sold over 2.25 lakh handsets tagged with some offers, has come out with an affordable smartphone, with high-end features and other promotional offers. The dual-SIM Ivory branded handset comes with Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich operating system and 1 GHz processor. The company has tied up with Alcatel to offer this phone at Rs 7,390 on Idea’s brand. Though it sold 2.25 lakh phones, the telecom provider was mostly focussing on the urban areas. This time around it was targeting the price-sensitive areas outside of urban centres. Its brand ambassadors, Abhishek Bhachan in Hindi and Mahesh Babu in Telugu, would promote this initiative. “With internal memory 4 GB and 512 MB RAM, this phone offers good battery support. It comes with the regular applications such as wi-fi, built-in social media apps, Facebook, Twitter and Music Video Player,” Rajat Mukarji, Chief Coporate Affairs Officer, said. He said the days of promotional schemes might be over. “The cost of operations of telecom firms has shot up particularly after the developments like mandatory new verification. It is causing a bit of strain on revenues of the industry,” he said. He, however, didn’t see any increase in pricing despite the strain on revenues. The industry’s debt, which stood at Rs 1.20 lakh crore last year, would go up to Rs 2 lakh crore. The debt of Idea Cellular would go up from last year’s figure of below Rs 11,000 crore.