<a href="http://www.businessinsider.in/searchresult.cms?query=nokia&amp;sortorder=effectivedate">Nokia</a> and <a href="http://www.businessinsider.in/searchresult.cms?query=blackberry&amp;sortorder=effectivedate">BlackBerry</a> are going to launch new <a href="http://www.businessinsider.in/searchresult.cms?query=smartphones&amp;sortorder=effectivedate">smartphones</a> next month with an aim to capture a significant share in the Indian market. The phone makers will be raking in Rs 200 crore each in India to make a comeback in the mobilephone market and re-build their strategies. While <keyword id="6354716" type="CITY" weightage="100" keywordseo="Nokia">Nokia</keyword> will launch upgraded version of its iconic feature phone 3310 by May-end, it is also likely to launch three smartphones. Whereas, <keyword id="6354356" type="COMPANY" weightage="100" keywordseo="BlackBerry">BlackBerry</keyword> brand licence owner in India, Optiemus Group, will launch one model at sub-Rs40,000 category in June and sub-Rs 20,000 category in July. “The BlackBerry brand licence owner in India, Optiemus Group, will spend Rs200 crore to relaunch the brand and will initially target enterprise customers and selling through retail chains before expanding penetration in the market,” chairman Ashok Gupta told ET. He said the company will launch BlackBerry through 4,000 retailers which includes the retail chains and even the premium neighbourhood stores. "We are expecting Rs2,000 crore sales in this fiscal,” he told ET. Re-entering Indian market can be somewhat tough for both the brands as Chinese smartphone makers have made a significant presence in the market. In a bid to win customers, Nokia will market its handsets on the durability factor which was associated with the brand and guaranteed software updates, BlackBerry will build the security buzz of smartphones. A HMD spokesperson told ET that a significant portion of its $500 million marketing spend will be in India.

Nostalgic? Nokia, BlackBerry are re-entering the Indian market with investment of Rs 200 crore; will launch new phones

<img class="gwt-Image" src="/photo/47453680.cms" />The world’s second richest man, <keyword id="124095" type="PERSON" weightage="80" keywordseo="Carlos-Slim">Carlos Slim</keyword>, was believed to be in India around two weeks back to explore a partnership between his America Movil and Indian business houses with telecom interests. 
 
America Movil's high-profile chairman, worth $77.1 billion according to Forbes, apparently met Videocon Group Chairman Venugopal Dhoot as well as senior executives of some other mobilephone firms. 
 
Slim, who is referred to as the 'Warren Buffett of Mexico', was quite optimistic about growth opportunities presented by the Indian telecom market, one of the people aware of talks with top Indian executives told Economic Times. 
 
Slim, world’s richest man after Bill Gates, is facing still challenges in Mexico, which is why he is now testing water in India and exploring a partnership between his company and Indian firms. 
 
America Movil, which counts Brazil, the US and Austria as its biggest markets after Mexico, is facing stiff challenges at home. Margins have shrunk to their narrowest since 2013 after a change in law sought to deter a dominant market player, or one that holds more than 50% of the market, from charging competitors for calls on its network. 
 
Although Slim's business interests range across sectors like telecommunications, education, healthcare, industrial manufacturing, food &amp; beverages, real estate, airlines, media, mining, oil, hospitality, entertainment, technology, retail, sports and financial services, the bedrock of his fortune is telecom. 
 
When ET contacted over email, an America Movil spokeswoman said, "We do not have any comments at this time on Mr Slim's visit to India." ET had sought details about Slim's visit, his meetings with heads of Indian telecom operators and American Movil's India plans. 
 Meanwhile, a top Videocon group executive said that large international telcos looking towards India for growth had evinced an interest to make strategic investments in <keyword id="262458" type="COMPANY" weightage="80" keywordseo="Videocon-Telecom">Videocon Telecom</keyword>. 
 
But he declined to elaborate on ET's query regarding Slim's meeting with the Videocon Group chairman. 
 
In January this year, Dhoot had told ET that Videocon's telecom unit had received feelers from a Mexican company as well as an Indian telecom player looking to buy a 49% stake. 
 
Industry executives told the financial daily Slim also met senior officials of a Mumbai-based telecom company and Bharti Airtel. 
 
 
However, an Airtel spokesperson denied the development and rejected the notion that there had been any talk of a likely investment. "We strongly deny these speculations which are completely incorrect, baseless and without an iota of truth," the spokesperson told ET. 
 
(Image: Reuters)

Is Carlos Slim, world’s second richest man, investing in Indian telecom?

<div class="image-container float_right" style="width:382px"><div class="image"><img src="http://static6.businessinsider.com/image/5065c648ecad047160000005-590-564/africa-gdp-map.jpg?maxX=382&amp;maxY=365" border="0" alt="Africa gdp map" width="382" height="365" /></div>Citi</div>MAMADOU NDIAYE grew up in Senegal. His parents were "not poor, but not rich". He was fascinated by mathematics, which he studied at Cheikh Anta Diop University in Dakar and then taught for several years in Côte d’Ivoire, saving to pursue his dream of studying in America.
He went to New York, where he worked at Staples, an office-supplies chain, to finance his masters in statistics at Columbia University. A customer, impressed by Mr Ndiaye’s sales advice, suggested that the Senegalese apply for a job with his own employer, IBM. That was 15 years ago. Now Mr Ndiaye is back home, as manager of the office Big Blue opened in Dakar last May.
The office in Senegal is just one sign that IBM believes <keyword id="12925" type="ENTERTAINMENT" weightage="60" keywordseo="Africa">Africa</keyword> will bring in billions. It is no newcomer: it sold its first gear there to South Africa’s railways in 1911 and a mainframe computer to Ghana’s central statistics bureau in 1964. Lately it has been paying special attention to the continent.
In July 2011 it won a ten-year, $1.5 billion contract to provide Bharti Airtel, an Indian mobile-phone company, with information-technology services in 16 African countries. Since mid-2011 it has set up shop in Angola, Mauritius and Tanzania, as well as Senegal. In all, it boasts a presence in more than 20 of Africa’s 54 countries. Last August it opened a research lab in Nairobi, one of only 12 in the world. And between February 5th and 7th Ginni Rometty, its chief executive, and all who report directly to her met dozens of African customers, actual and prospective, in Johannesburg and the Kenyan capital. It was, Mrs Rometty said, the first time the whole top brass had assembled outside New York since she became the boss just over a year ago.
Big Blue may be ahead, but it is not alone. Last month Eric Schmidt, Google’s chairman, spent a week in sub-Saharan cities. He enthused about Nairobi, which, he wrote, "has emerged as a serious tech hub and may become the African leader." Orange, a French mobile operator, and Baidu, China’s answer to Google, recently introduced a jointly branded smartphone browser in Africa and the Middle East. Orange also sponsored this year’s Africa Cup of Nations, a football tournament, in South Africa. (Nigeria won it, beating Burkina Faso in the final on February 10th.)
This month Microsoft, which has offices in 14 African countries, unveiled a smartphone to be sold in several African markets. It is made by China’s Huawei and uses Microsoft’s new operating system.
In Kenya Microsoft intends to bring broadband to places that do not yet have electricity, using solar power and "white spaces", or spare broadcast-television frequencies. Within a year, says Fernando de Sousa, the general manager for Microsoft in Africa, 6,000 people in the Rift Valley will have access to broadband. Similar projects are planned elsewhere. Since October Microsoft has been running "app factories" for programmers in Egypt and South Africa.
Mark Walker of IDC, a research firm, says that in the past three or four years multinational companies have adopted a "completely fresh approach". They have "a lot more skin in the game: investing in local people, so there’s proper knowledge transfer, investing in country offices." Companies are in it for the long term now, rather than quitting after a bad quarter or two.
Africa’s chief attraction is that it has been growing while richer regions have stalled (see chart 1). Its demographic prospects are promising, too. As America, Europe and China age, Africa can expect a bulge of workers in their productive prime. Though skills are in short supply, they are becoming more abundant. According to the McKinsey Global Institute, the consulting firm’s research unit, in 2002 only 32% of Africans had secondary or tertiary education, but by 2020, 48% will have. The continent can call on degree-laden expatriates such as Mr Ndiaye and Uyi Stewart, the Nigerian chief scientist of IBM’s Nairobi lab.
Some countries are better off, more stable or simply keener than others to make the most of IT. Kenya may be keenest. In 2006, frustrated by the slow progress of a regional plan to lay a fibre-optic cable along the east coast of the continent, Kenya negotiated its own link to the United Arab Emirates. The Gulf cable landed in 2009. The regional link, in which Kenya remains a partner, followed the next year.
<h3>The lion’s byte</h3>
Bitange Ndemo, a bigwig in the Ministry of Information and Communications and the man responsible for the cable from the Gulf, says he wants to see a rise in IT’s share of Kenyan GDP from about 5% now to 35% "within a very short period". He hopes for a mighty shift of employment away from agriculture. "But politicians must have the will," Mr Ndemo says.
If they are to create new markets and to profit from them, technology companies have to be on the spot. John Kelly, IBM’s head of research, says that after the firm set up labs in China in 1995 and in India in 1998, "we found that we were getting innovation out of those research labs which could only have occurred in those locations." The Indian lab, for example, produced the "spoken web", for illiterate people with cheap phones.
One of the Nairobi lab’s early challenges is traffic. The city has few traffic lights or cameras; hence the awful congestion. Signals from motorists’ mobile phones can help to track traffic, but planners have few data to work with. IBM’s lab will harness other sources, such as security cameras that are not aimed at the road but capture images of it anyway. IBM will then crunch all the data to help planners control traffic and decide where to build more roads.
The Nairobi lab is expected to earn its keep quickly. The Chinese and Indian labs, Mr Kelly says, took ten years to make a significant contribution technically and commercially. Kenya’s target is five. He says the lab has made a good start, drawing on work by an older sibling in Tokyo to tackle its traffic problem.
In many sectors, such as health care, education and water, as well as traffic, governments are sure to be important customers for IT companies. But private clients matter too, especially in telecoms and finance. The mobile phone, the first computer many Africans will own (see chart 2), is the bridge between the two.
To Westerners, "mobile banking" is a new way of doing something old. To many Africans, it is the obvious way of doing something new. In Kenya M-PESA, a system of transferring money over phones, is an everyday, reliable utility. Equity Bank, a fast-growing bank, most of whose customers have never had an account before, has come of age with mobile technology: its chief executive, James Mwangi, says his customers can use any of its 54 products on the move. For technology companies, all this means a growing demand for many things: reliable connectivity; software; analysis of data on spending, lending and repayment; and data centres.
Technology companies say they are keen to serve smaller businesses too. Microsoft has announced a programme called SME4Afrika, which is intended to bring 1m small and medium-sized enterprises online. Mr de Sousa points out that technology can also draw informal businesses into the formal economy. The ability to use software, computing power and storage online "as a service", paying only for what you need and only when you need it, may put the cost of information technology within the budget of many small African businesses. "The person who invented the cloud did it for Africa," says Mr Ndiaye of IBM in Senegal.
Mr Kelly makes a bolder claim, linking Africa’s emergence to that of "big data". IBM’s answer to how the world can cope with the rising torrent of exabytes is "cognitive computing". Instead of being given detailed instructions, cognitive computers are fed masses of data and use statistical analysis to answer complex questions. Watson, IBM’s first of this kind, was clever enough to win "Jeopardy", an American television quiz show, beating human champions hollow. The true purpose of a Watson, however, is not to show off on television but to sift data from radio telescopes or provide medical diagnoses.
<h3>From Jeopardy to epidemiology</h3>
Mr Kelly sees an opportunity "for Africa to move, and move first, to this new era of computing." It can leapfrog straight to the tech frontier, without worrying about adapting old systems to cope with the data it creates. At the Catholic University of Eastern Africa, which will eventually be the new lab’s home, a Kenyan asked Mr Kelly, "Will you bring Watson to Africa?" Yes, he replied, if someone suggests a problem for it to solve. Mr Ndemo spoke up: "Let us bring Watson here in nine months." Africa has plenty of problems. Computing power can help Africans solve them.
Click <a href="http://www.economist.com/products/subscribe/CUR22/noreg">here</a> to subscribe to The Economist
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IBM And Google Have Discovered A Massive New Market Opportunity

Billionaire Mukesh Ambanis <keyword id="10926" type="CITY" weightage="20" keywordseo="Reliance">Reliance</keyword> Industries is weighing a bid for Deutsche Telekom AG's Netherlands subsidiary, according to people familiar with the matter, Bloomberg reported. The Indian conglomerate is working with an adviser to evaluate an offer for <keyword id="4780953" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="t-mobile-netherlands">T-Mobile Netherlands</keyword>, the sources said, asking not to be identified as the information is confidential. Deutsche Telekom is seeking about 5 billion euros ($5.9 billion) in any sale, the people said. The report said that deliberations are ongoing, no final decision has been made and there's no certainty that Reliance will decide to proceed with a formal offer, according to the people. Deutsche Telekom declined to comment. A representative for Reliance also could not comment immediately. Deutsche Telekom is working with Morgan Stanley on the sale of the business, which has attracted interest from private equity firms including Apax Partners, Apollo Global, Providence Equity and <keyword id="6402698" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="warburg-pincus">Warburg Pincus</keyword>, Bloomberg had reported last month. Buyout firms are drawn to such assets as they can gain control of underlying infrastructure, which offers steady long-term returns. In May, Dutch telecom group <keyword id="1126847" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="20" keywordseo="Royal-KPN-NV">Royal KPN NV</keyword> had said that it had rejected an "unsolicited high-level approach" from investment firms EQT AB and <keyword id="9837243" type="COMPANY" weightage="20" keywordseo="stonepeak-infrastructure-partners">Stonepeak Infrastructure Partners</keyword>. Reliance is India's largest company by market value, with a business that spans oil refining, petrochemicals, retail and telecommunication sectors. A deal for T-Mobile Netherlands would represent a rare purchase in Europe and come as Mukesh Ambani tries to transform Reliance from an old-economy conglomerate into a technology and e-commerce titan, the report said. Ambani had said previously that he eventually wants to expand Reliance's digital unit -- Jio Platforms -- overseas and last year it secured more than $20 billion of backing from the investors, including Facebook. "This could be one step forward in that direction, in addition to leveraging natural synergies to Jio," said Kranthi Bathini, a strategist at Mumbai-based consultancy <keyword id="11832496" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="wealthmills-securities">WealthMills Securities</keyword>. "This could also serve as the beginning of aggressive acquisitions in this space and deploying funds in different geographies after Jio Platforms raised record money last year," Bathini said. Shares in Reliance have risen 5.2 per cent this year, giving it a market value of 13.7 trillion rupees ($184 billion). The stock rose as much as 1.7 per cent on Tuesday, before giving up some of these gains. Deutsche Telekom entered the Dutch mobile-phone market in 2000, acquiring a stake in a venture with Belgacom SA and Tele Danmark. The business was renamed T-Mobile Netherlands in 2003 after the German carrier bought the remainder. SEE ALSO: <a target="_blank" class="c-link c-message_attachment__title_link" href="https://www.businessinsider.in/tech/news/google-has-rolled-out-a-new-feature-to-skip-chapters-in-youtube-videos/articleshow/85210299.cms">You can now skip chapters in YouTube videos with two-finger double tap</a> <a target="_blank" class="c-link c-message_attachment__title_link" href="https://www.businessinsider.in/tech/apps/news/battlegrounds-mobile-india-ios-version-expected-to-launch-on-august-20/articleshow/85208861.cms">Battlegrounds Mobile India iOS version expected to launch on August 20</a>

Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Industries may bid for Deutsche Telekom AG's Netherlands subsidiary, reports Bloomberg

<img class="gwt-Image" src="/photo/47010902.cms" /> Soon after <keyword id="874458" type="COMPANY" weightage="20" keywordseo="Xiaomi">Xiaomi</keyword> has created ripples across the tech ambit for having sold 2.12 million phones in 12 hours, Indian mobilephone maker <keyword id="71696" type="COMPANY" weightage="20" keywordseo="Micromax">Micromax</keyword> is also planning to walk the proven path. As per a report by The Economic Times, Micromax is introducing '<keyword id="2437759" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="flash-sale">flash sale</keyword>' to its online retail strategy as the country's second largest handset maker looks to maintain its break-neck growth rate and take competition such as Xiaomi and <keyword id="11148" type="CITY" weightage="20" keywordseo="Motorola">Motorola</keyword> head-on. 
	 
	Micromax chief Vineet Taneja told The Economic Times, the phone makers will offer exclusive products in different price ranges with online retailers Flipkart, <keyword id="18635" type="CITY" weightage="20" keywordseo="Amazon">Amazon</keyword> and <keyword id="541988" type="COMPANY" weightage="20" keywordseo="SnapDeal">Snapdeal</keyword>. Micromax has clocked 54% jump in its revenues for the year ended March 2015 at around 10,000 crore. 
	 
	"Apart from creating a buzz, it (flash sale) also helps in planning our supplies better. It gives us an estimate of how much stock we have," Taneja added while speaking to the financial daily. 
	 
	Micromax has recently launched Canvas Spark, a Rs4,999 smartphone, to be sold exclusively on Snapdeal through flash sales starting April 29. The company plans similar deals with Amazon and Flipkart. 
	 
	However, the company will continue to sell its existing product portfolio across the online portals and through offline stores. 
	 
	While this is the first time Micromax has not explored flash sale on its own , its subsidiary <keyword id="2602309" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="Yu-Televentures">Yu Televentures</keyword> holds flash sales of its Yu smartphone every Thursday and has sold over 200,000 units so far. 
	 
	With the flash sale and tie-ups with eCommerce majors, Taneja said Micromax aims to extend its lead in the mass smartphone market, or sub- 7,000 segment, which is the fastest growing price segment. 
	 
	The firm looks to maintain its 50% growth rate this fiscal year through new launches, online flash sales and by ramping up local manufacturing. 
	 
	Taneja said contribution of the mass market segment to overall volumes had increased to 60% in January-March quarter, from 50% in April-June 2014. While the overall smartphone market grew 17% over this period, the mass market segment doubled, contributing 45%-50% by value, he added. 
	 
	(Image: Reuters)

Who wants a new phone? Visit the Micromax flash sale

<img class="gwt-Image" src="/photo/47526043.cms" />Finally the government is upping its ante against mobile operators over call drops, which have off-late become an irritant for Indian mobilephone users. 
 
The government is mulling to direct operators to return the money charged for the dropped calls or throw in extra airtime to compensate for deficient services. 
Indian users, who have emerged as the world’s second-biggest market, behind China, are vexed due to call drops. 
 
The service quality has been deteriorating due to low call rates and fast adoption of internet on mobile. 
 
"The idea is to ensure that a customer is not made to pay for a deficiency on the part of an operator," a key official in the telecom ministry told Times of India. 
 
The official added that the ministry was "working aggressively" on the issue, especially as call drops became a regular phenomenon in choked networks of metros. 
 <keyword id="2419779" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="80" keywordseo="telecom-minister-Ravi-Shankar-Prasad">Telecom Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad</keyword> has been raising the issue of call drops time and again. "Call drops need to be minimised. Private operators need to reinforce their mechanism. I have directed officials in the telecom department to work on a disincentive architecture (for the operators) to address the issue," Prasad said while speaking at a conference on completion of one year of the NDA government. 
 
The official source told TOI that the ministry also planned to rope in sectoral regulator TRAI on the issue. 
 
"We plan to find a solution soon. It could be as early as the next six months," the source told the news daily, without giving further details. 
 
TOI reported that TRAI’s customer satisfaction survey related to mobile services failed to recognise the issue of call drops and poor broadband connectivity. 
However, as per experts, making operators pay for call drops may not be that easy. 
 
"There needs to be a mechanism in place to recognize when a call is dropped due to network issues. Also, there should be a way to confirm this so that the customer is 
aware of the deficiency," a telecom industry expert told TOI. 
 
Meanwhile, operators blame the lack of adequate spectrum and problems related to erection of mobile towers for the growing network congestion and call drops. 
 
CEO of Bharti Airtel, Gopal Vittal, said that they faced a stiff resistance in installation of mobile towers and needed more spectrum to handle the additional traffic on mobile networks. 
 
But some mobile operators have decided to address the issue and are compensating customers for dropped calls. 
 
TOI reported that Anil Ambani's Reliance Communications doesn't charge a customer for the outgoing mobile pulse where the call gets disconnected due to network problems. Similarly, Uninor gives a minute of free talk time within 24 hours for disconnections during a call. 
 
(Image: Indiatimes)

You Searched For "indian mobilephone market" and got 6 results

Nostalgic? Nokia, BlackBerry are re-entering the Indian market with investment of Rs 200 crore; will launch new phones

BI India Bureau

Is Carlos Slim, world’s second richest man, investing in Indian telecom?

BI India Bureau

IBM And Google Have Discovered A Massive New Market Opportunity

The Economist

Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Industries may bid for Deutsche Telekom AG's Netherlands subsidiary, reports Bloomberg

IANS

Who wants a new phone? Visit the Micromax flash sale

BI India Bureau

Frustrated by call drops? Soon, mobile operators may compensate you for it

BI India Bureau