A little-known Indian company will on Wednesday launch a
smartphone believed to be the cheapest in the world, targeting a market
already dominated by low-cost handsets.
Set to be priced at under 500 rupees ($7.30), domestic
handset maker Ringing Bells’ Freedom 251 smartphone is about one percent
of the price of the latest Apple iPhone.
Ringing Bells was set up in September 2015 and began selling
mobile phones via its website a few weeks ago under its Bell brand, a
spokeswoman said.
“This is our flagship model and we think it will bring a revolution in the industry,” she told AFP.
Ringing Bells currently imports parts from overseas and assembles
them in India but plans to make its phones domestically within a year,
the spokeswoman said.
Cheap smartphone handsets, many of them Chinese-made, are readily
available in the Indian market but domestic competitors are making
inroads, with models selling for less than $20.
India is the world’s second-largest mobile market and notched up its
billionth mobile phone subscriber in October, according to the country’s
telecoms regulator.
But in poorer Indian states such as Bihar, “teledensity” — the
penetration of telephone connections for every hundred people — is as
low as 54 percent, with a stark urban-rural divide.
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