Unlike Xiaomi, Phicomm is not a big player in China. The company holds less than 1 percent of the smartphone market share in the country and has been mostly known for being an original equipment maker (OEM), but it has big plans for India.
In a recent interview with ET’s Gulveen Aulakh, Phicomm’s president of global sales Jeffrey Fan stated that India will be the third market, where they intend to establish local presence. Phicomm initially plans to hire 20 people for the local office, but within a year, they will set-up an R&D centre in the country, followed by a manufacturing facility in three-four years’ time.
In an invite for the June 3 press event, Phicomm teased the release of Passion 660 smartphone (also known as PHICOMM P660 in China) as its first LTE smartphone for the Indian market. The smartphone includes a 5-inch full HD display, Qualcomm Snapdragon 615 octa-core processor, 2GB of RAM, dual-SIM support and Android 4.4. The phone also packs 4G LTE support, 2300 mAh battery, 32GB of internal storage, microSD card slot, 13MP primary camera and 5MP front shooter.
With these specifications, the phone will be directly competing with Xiaomi’s Mi 4i smartphone, so pricing is going to play big role.
