LATEST MOBILE REVIEW PRICE SPECIFICATION AND TECH NEWS

Next time when your mobile phone flashes the “Battery Low” message, you might not go through a wave of irritated emotions. Olive Telecom has rolled out India’s first hybrid powered mobile phone with a free Airtel connection! In addition to the regular LiOn battery, the phone can be powered by a sleek AAA battery as well. This will come as a huge sigh of relief to people who regularly find their phones low on battery with no place or time to charge them.

The mobile phone, christened “Olive FrvrOn”, boasts of quite a few features for its rather modest Rs 1299 price tag. A 1.5” colour display, polyphonic ringtones, stereo headset, built-in FM radio and a speaker phone deck it up nicely to generate sufficient appeal.

The tie-up, in my opinion, has a neat understanding of the core market up for grabs. The Indian mobile phone market is seeing increased share of new handset manufacturers and this stems from the offering of good features at insanely attractive prices. According to the Voice&Data 100 Indian Telecom Survey, Nokia’s share came down to 52.2% from 64% last year and homegrown handset manufacturers like Spice, Micromax and Karbonn upped their share from 3-4% last year to 14% now. Olive’s phone will be able to exploit this trend sufficiently and the hybrid power will set it considerably apart from other mobile phones in this segment where Airtel has smartly moved to cash in on this event it foresees.

Market penetration is written large all over this. Olive Telecom and Airtel have started a marketing campaign in rural areas with 19 vans stationed in Kolkata, Cooch Behar and Behrampur. Promoters on board demonstrate the device and purchases made will be accompanied with a battery powered LED lantern as a free gift. Retailers are also being offered chargers and re-chargeable batteries to loan it to customers.

“After its successful debut and huge customer response for Olive frvrOn we have partnered with Airtel, country’s largest mobile phone operator offering a free Airtel connection with the handset at a consumer friendly price. The Airtel offer will be available in the West Bengal region. We, now, have a chance to take it to areas where the quality of electricity is not always very good. In effect we will take it to markets that the phone was intrinsically designed for,” explained Arun Khanna, Chairman Olive Telecommunication.