August 06, 2009
Jubel Thomas Joy
Bangalore: Bharti Airtel, an Indian telecom company has launched the BlackBerry Curve 8520 at Rs.15,990 in India, targeting young professionals and students in collaboration with the manufacturer of the device, the Canada-based Research in Motion (RIM). Before India, 8520 was launched in U.S. and Canada by RIM. The BlackBerry Curve 8520 will be available nationally from Airtel's authorized outlets through Bharti Teletech across India from August 7.
As for the feature, the BlackBerry Curve 8520 comes with a standard full-QWERTY and Wi-Fi support. It is quite light weight as well, tipping the scales at just 106 grams. The phone comes with 256 MB flash memory and a 512 MHz CPU (central processing unit). It supports memory expansion hot swappable micro SD or SDHC (Secure Digital High Capacity) cards and supports cards of up to 16 GB. There is nothing much to talk on the camera front. The 8520 comes with a two megapixel camera with support for video recording. The battery is a 1150 mAhr, one good for up to 4.5 hours of talk time and 17 days of standby time.
Most of the analysts feel that the launch of BlackBerry Curve 8520 follows that of Nokia's E-series phones that have most of the standard BlackBerry features and are available at a price starting from Rs.12,500. Frenny Bawa, Vice President, RIM said, "The launch of BlackBerry Curve 8520 in India on Tuesday was not a reaction to Nokia's E-series. We are pioneers in smartphone. We do not need to react to any market development."
Currently, the cheapest device available from the BlackBerry stable is the 8700g, which is a basic enterprise email device available for around Rs.9,990. It has no camera or other multimedia features. The most expensive one is the BlackBerry Bold, which costs around Rs.31,990. BlackBerry also offers the Pearl series of phones that do not have a Qwerty-enabled keyboard and are available for Rs.23,990. In early January, Vodafone Essar launched the BlackBerry Storm, a touchscreen phone, for Rs.27,990.
According to research firm Gartner, out of the 120 million mobile phones sold in India every year, 4-5 percent are smartphones, and Nokia has around 60-70 percent of the market share in this segment. The 8520 is launched targeting virtually untapped segment of young professionals and retail consumers who have been inching to get their hands on a BlackBerry device but were intimidated by the pricing of the earlier models. Naveen Mishra, Analyst (communications research) at IDC India said, "India is a young market in that more than 50 percent of mobile phone users are under the age of 35. They are looking for a phone that fulfills both their enterprise and personal needs, including email as well as entertainment. This phone has made BlackBerry more approachable to 20-25-year-olds, who make up the largest chunk of high-end mobile users in the country."
The new model is likely to be available in different skin colours, contrary to its signature colour, black. Currently, RIM has approximately a 28.5 million BlackBerry subscriber base across the world.
As for the feature, the BlackBerry Curve 8520 comes with a standard full-QWERTY and Wi-Fi support. It is quite light weight as well, tipping the scales at just 106 grams. The phone comes with 256 MB flash memory and a 512 MHz CPU (central processing unit). It supports memory expansion hot swappable micro SD or SDHC (Secure Digital High Capacity) cards and supports cards of up to 16 GB. There is nothing much to talk on the camera front. The 8520 comes with a two megapixel camera with support for video recording. The battery is a 1150 mAhr, one good for up to 4.5 hours of talk time and 17 days of standby time.
Most of the analysts feel that the launch of BlackBerry Curve 8520 follows that of Nokia's E-series phones that have most of the standard BlackBerry features and are available at a price starting from Rs.12,500. Frenny Bawa, Vice President, RIM said, "The launch of BlackBerry Curve 8520 in India on Tuesday was not a reaction to Nokia's E-series. We are pioneers in smartphone. We do not need to react to any market development."
Currently, the cheapest device available from the BlackBerry stable is the 8700g, which is a basic enterprise email device available for around Rs.9,990. It has no camera or other multimedia features. The most expensive one is the BlackBerry Bold, which costs around Rs.31,990. BlackBerry also offers the Pearl series of phones that do not have a Qwerty-enabled keyboard and are available for Rs.23,990. In early January, Vodafone Essar launched the BlackBerry Storm, a touchscreen phone, for Rs.27,990.
According to research firm Gartner, out of the 120 million mobile phones sold in India every year, 4-5 percent are smartphones, and Nokia has around 60-70 percent of the market share in this segment. The 8520 is launched targeting virtually untapped segment of young professionals and retail consumers who have been inching to get their hands on a BlackBerry device but were intimidated by the pricing of the earlier models. Naveen Mishra, Analyst (communications research) at IDC India said, "India is a young market in that more than 50 percent of mobile phone users are under the age of 35. They are looking for a phone that fulfills both their enterprise and personal needs, including email as well as entertainment. This phone has made BlackBerry more approachable to 20-25-year-olds, who make up the largest chunk of high-end mobile users in the country."
The new model is likely to be available in different skin colours, contrary to its signature colour, black. Currently, RIM has approximately a 28.5 million BlackBerry subscriber base across the world.
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