Lava Mobiles has revealed its plans to launch more Android smartphones as well an Android tablet next year. This tablet is likely to be announced in February at INR 5550, while phones will follow in March/April.
Lava Android Tablet:
This unnamed Lava Android tablet will be launched in partnership with a telco in the market, and there won’t be an unlocked version. Company was silent on the name this telecom operator but revealed that it has a nationwide footprint.
“Lava will launch an Android 2.3 based tablet in February for Rs 5,500. It will be made available bundled with a service provider’s connection and will not be available as a standalone device”
– S N Rai, Lava International Co-founder and Director
Tablet is also expected to feature a 7 inch display, 1GHz processor and India specific applications on-board.
Lava Android Smartphones & R&D:
“We are soon going to expand our smartphone portfolio for which we will file large number of patents,” S N Rai added.
There are no details on these phones right now, but they are expected to be entry-level devices with Gingerbread on-board. Company is focusing more on research and development these days and had opened an R&D center in Bangalore last year. It has already filed for two patents and more are in pipeline. There are rumors that Lava might develop Android smartphones in India, rather than re-branding OEM devices, these home-made phones could come with Samsung’s upcoming cheap processors.
Revenues:
The company also announced at a product launch that it expected to finish this fiscal year with revenues to the tune of INR 1000 crores. Lava is increasingly becoming an important player in the domestic market, and now it plans to expand in Africa and is looking at markets like Peru and Chile.
could this be a tie up with reliance for their WiMax rollout, had heard of Reliance planning a rollout at that price point.
🙂