LG G2 smartphone with price of Rs 38,804 for 16GB and Rs 42,456 for 32GB at Snapdeal.com – supports TD-LTE 4G network of Bharti Airtel and Reliance Jio Infocomm.
However, the Korean devices major is not expecting mass adoption of G2 phones in India as both Reliance Jio Infocomm and Bharti Airtel are not ready with 4G voice calls.
Bharti Airtel has 4G presence in 4 towns – Kolkata, Bangalore, Pune and Chandigarh — in India. The billionaire Mukesh Ambani-promoted Reliance Jio Infocomm will launch 4G early next year. At present, there’s no guarantee that they will offer voice service on 4G network soon.
Last year, Chinese telecom equipment maker Huawei launched its 4G phone in India, but it did not receive significant response from 4G users on Airtel network.
Amit Gujral, marketing head at LG Mobile, says the company will offer 4G phones in India once TD-LTE networks are ready for mass uses.
Telecom operators which got broadband wireless access license in 2010 did not launch 4G services on their TD-LTE networks for mass consumption. Bharti Airtel is currently struggling to meet its 4G targets.
Sandeep Sibal, vice president and country manager of technology for Qualcomm India and South Asia, says 4G smartphones will be available in India once telecom operators are ready with networks.
Qualcomm supplies Snapdragon 800 Processor for LG G2 smartphone that runs on Android’s old OS version.
LG is betting big on Indian smartphone market. However, the company does not talk about its poor performance in terms of market share. Despite huge marketing budget, LG could not increase smartphone market share to above 5 percent. Its main rivals include Samsung, Micromax, Apple, Nokia, Sony, etc.
The smartphone market in India is reaching newer heights, with a total of 9.3 million smartphones being shipped in the second quarter this year. “We will improve share since we focus on innovation,” LG’s Amit said.
LG Mobiles has earmarked Rs 100 crore for marketing and strengthening the retail and channel expansion. Sony Mobile, one of the rivals of LG, last week said it would spend around Rs 300 crore towards marketing and promotion. ( Sony Mobile India to increase retail presence to 8,000 this fiscal )
“With the launch of G2 our aim is of capturing 10 percent market share of the Smartphone category by the end of 2014. We are targeting 150 Cr turnover from G2,” said Soon Kwon, MD, LG India.
Analysys Mason says operators in all markets are in the process of implementing LTE, but the emergence of the APAC and LATAM regions is set to challenge European and North American operators’ early lead.
The largest number of LTE network trials is in Central and Eastern Europe (at 26), emerging APAC (24) and Western Europe (20).
Trials in the first two regions are being driven by adoption of the technology among regional operators, such as Bharti Airtel and Reliance Infotel. Infrastructure vendors such as Ericsson, Huawei, Nokia Solutions and Networks (NSN), Samsung and ZTE are demonstrating the required network upgrade and transition options, including LTE overlay and single-RAN solutions.
Baburajan K
[email protected]
