Idea Cellular, the Aditya Birla Group telecom arm, in a major thrust to 3G operations has launched smartphones with price points that have broken all previous records at Rs 2,609 and Rs 4,751. The launch is expected to make company’s investments worth more than Rs 10,000 crore in 3G license and networks, revenue accretive and profitable over coming years.

Himanshu Kapania, MD, Idea Cellular said, the only way 3G services can become profitable, is to reach mobiles, texts and data services to the masses at price points that are affordable. At present smartphones constitute only 10 per cent of the total handsets sold in India per month. “We expect to utilise this opportunity through our affordable Android based phones, we are sourcing from ZTE and Huawei. These phones would ensure rapid uptake by our 2G subscribers wishing to upgrade to 3G, and existing 3G users — especially in the semi urban parts of the country which are traditional strongholds of Idea,” Kapania said.

The Idea 3G smartphones come in two variants of 3.5 inch — Blade, and 2.8 inch — !D 280 with full touch capacitive screens. The smartphones are based on 2.2 Android Operating System with 3.2 mega pixel camera. Other features include GPS navigator software, FM radio, and MP3 player, WiFi, Bluetooth, social media apps like Facebook, Twitter, Orkut, browser, Operamini, and pre-loaded Google and Youtube, besides range of other high-end features and Idea TV, which would be available for free for 3 months.

As an introductory offer Idea is offering data services worth Rs 3,500 with a Rs 259 pack, along with the new 3G smartphones. Hence !D 280, the smartphone which is originally priced at Rs 5,850, will be available to Idea 3G users for just Rs 2,609, and Blade, which is originally priced at Rs 7,992 will be available to for Idea 3G users for Rs 4,751. “The handset device can operate as a mobile phone, a mini computer and also act as a Wi-Fi router,” Kapania said. At present the company is looking at a few thousand handsets, which will be available in stores by the end of the week. The officials declined to give the exact number they are sourcing from Huawei and ZTE. “There is no point getting huge volumes and then sitting on the devices. We will progress on numbers as the demand for the devices picks up,” Kapania said.