To capitalise on the Onam, Kerala’s biggest festival, Nokia India has announced an exciting cash back offer for its consumers in Kerala. Nokia consumers have the opportunity to get cash-back up to Rs one lakh on purchase of Nokia devices this festive season.
As part of the promotion, on purchase of every Nokia handset, consumers in Kerala are entitled to a scratch-card which will have either a cash back offer or a 10% discount on purchase of mobile accessories. The cash back offer ranges from Rs 51 to Rs 100,000.
According to T S Sridhar, General Manager-South, Nokia India, “Kerala is an important region for us and we have created this offer for our valued consumers in keeping with the spirit of the festival. We want to strengthen our connect with them by sharing their joy and enthusiasm in celebrating Onam, the harvest festival, which is believed to usher in a season of prosperity and plenty.”

Delhi-based handset manufacturer Airfone, has announced the launch of AF222 DUO.
The phone is a dual SIM device and supports working of two GSM devices. The handset manufacturer has added features such as dual battery, dual memory, dual speakers, dual camera and dual Memory card slot to the device.
Dual battery feature allows users to switch on to the inbuilt internal battery for further use, incase the external battery expires.
Also the phone comes with two cameras. The main camera supports up to 2.0- megapixels while front camera is of 0.3-megapixels.
Other features include MP3, Video Player, FM Radio, Bluetooth and GPRS/WAP.
The handset will come in four colours and will be available for Rs 3,499.
Vishal Chitkara, director, Airfone India Ltd, said “This phone targeted at metros and Tier I cities is an important step for us to strengthen our position in these cities”.

The service works the same way as a voice mail, with the added benefit of video.
MTNL will soon launch video mail services for its customers in Delhi and Mumbai. The services will enable users to leave a video message in case the person called is not available.
MTNL will use a Tanla Solutions 3G platform to offer this service.
MTNL is the first Indian mobile operator to launch 3G services in India.
Tanla wants to capitalise on the 3G value added services space. The company already provides 3G services to networks outside India such as in the United Kingdom and Sri Lanka.
Tanla’s 3G VAS platform enables a number of video based interactive applications such as interactive video response portals, video chat, video SMS, video alerts and video mailing. This enables mobile operators and service providers to enhance portal offerings with feature rich, personalised video interactivity.

HTC Corporation and Reliance Communications have announced an exclusive partnership to launch the HTC Wildfire smartphone in India.
The 3G ready HTC Wildfire, equipped with HTC Sense, is an Android-based GSM phone that offers integration of popular social networks.
Under the alliance, Reliance GSM customers can avail up to 500 MB of free data access every month for a period of six months.
The HTC Wildfire will be priced at Rs 16,590 and will be available at all HTC resellers across the country.
Mahesh Prasad, president – marketing, wireless business, Reliance Communications, said, “The launch of HTC Wildfire is in line with our strategy to offer next-generation service on mobile phones enabled with superior voice clarity, hi-speed wireless data network access and ultra-fast application downloads to Reliance Mobile customers.”
The HTC Wildfire smartphone features a 3.2-inch touch screen, a 5 MP camera with auto focus LED flash, FM radio and a media player with a slot for expandable memory. The HTC Wildfire comes with some additional features including proximity sensor, G-sensor, digital compass, light sensor and an optical joystick, next generation caller ID, support for phone, email, text messaging, Wi-Fi and HTML web browser.

The government today said telecom operators have reported 2,150 cases of mobile cloning during 2009-2010.
“The government has come to know through telecom service providers that approximately 2,150 cases of mobile cloning through duplication of subscriber identity in different parts of country have come to their notice during 2009-2010,” Minister of Communications and Information Technology A Raja said in a written reply in the Rajya Sabha.
Mobile cloning is a method of copying a mobile phone’s International Mobile Equipment Identity (IMEI) onto another phone, which allows the user of the cloned phone to make fraudulent calls, the bill for which is sent to the victim as opposed to the perpetrator. This method is also used to carry out anti social activities.
Raja further said in his statement that though cloning of subscriber identity is difficult due to elaborate authentication and Encryption mechanisms used in the mobile network, the government plans to monitor mobile cloning through TERM (Telecom Enforcement, Resource and Monitoring) cells.

The number of mobile device sold in India is expected to reach 138.6 million in 2010, an increase of 18.5 per cent over sales of 117 million units in 2009.
According to a report by Gartner, the mobile handset market is expected to show steady growth through 2014, when sales are projected to surpass 206 million units.
Indian handset sales currently constitute about 10 per cent of worldwide mobile phone sales. Gartner says that due to the size of the Indian market and its open nature (mobile devices being sold independent of service provider), India has attracted many global mobile manufacturers.
The report further says that local mobile device manufacturers have also entered India’s already crowded phone market, and that this intense competition has LED to very low cost devices being sold in the country, where previously very few vendors such as Nokia and Motorola used to dominate.
Anshul Gupta, principal research analyst at Gartner says, “Established global device manufacturers are losing ground due to fierce competition from local and Chinese manufacturers in the low cost segment. Carrier strategies, lower tariffs and/or third generation (3G) data plans will continue to shape the mobile device market in India.”
He adds, “A large volume of mobile device sales in India come from the low end device segment. The average selling price of a mobile device is approximately $52 (about Rs 2,400), with 85 per cent of devices sold costing below $100 (approximately Rs 4,700).”
According to Gartner, although 3G technology has not been introduced in India yet, 3G device sales are expected to account for 16.7 per cent of total sales this year, up from 9.2 per cent in 2009. By 2014, 3G device sales are expected to account for 69 per cent of total sales.
Smartphone sales in India made up 5.2 per cent of total device sales in the first quarter of this year, and Gartner expects this share to increase to 18 per cent by 2014.

Chinese telecom firm ZTE Corporation, which had entered the Indian retail market as a standalone player last year, will offer smartphones by the end of year.
“We plan to launch ZTE branded smartphones in the Indian retail market by the end of year, which will increase our existing market share in the country,” ZTE India chairman and managing director D K Ghosh said.
Last year, the company launched a range of low cost GSM handsets at price points ranging from Rs 1,100 to Rs 3,800 and it is estimated that ZTE sold over 15 million handsets in India by bundling various Indian operators’ services with their handsets.
ZTE partners with  BSNL, Reliance Communications and Tata Teleservices in India.