Spark Mobiles, a part of United Arab Emirates-based Spark Group of Companies, has announced its foray into the Indian market. The company has signed on actor, R Madhavan as the brand ambassador for its range of mobile handsets.
Elaine Ester Roach, chairperson, Spark Group of Companies, tells afaqs!, “We will zero in on the creative and media agencies to handle our communications in a month’s time. The pitch is currently on.”
Currently, the promotional activities are being handled by the company’s in-house creative department in Dubai.
Spark Mobiles has earmarked ad spends of over Rs 100 crore for its Indian business, says Roach. The campaign will kick off in December. The handsets will be launched before the end of 2009, Roach says.
The company stresses on the ‘toughness’ of the handsets and will build its positioning around phones that are “virtually indestructible under demanding conditions”, specifies Roach. The phones are waterproof, shockproof and have been tested by four-wheel drive over. Additionally, they will also offer high-end multimedia, Web access and advanced music features.
In a press statement, Roach says, “We have a strong base and a respectable market share in the UAE and are now eyeing India as an important potential for our growth strategy. We have a demonstrable past of challenging established brands and are confident our handsets would be a hit amongst Indian audiences.”
“The single most important factor that convinced me to endorse this product was the amount of research and development that has gone into the making of the phones,” says Madhavan.
The company plans to launch five phones by the year-end and add 15 more handsets in another year’s time. While the pricing of the phones is being decided on, the basic handset is priced at Rs 2,200.
The handsets will initially be manufactured in the UAE. The company will set up assembly units in India soon.
Spark Mobiles announces launch in India
Sony Ericsson starts free Cloud storage rollout
Sony Ericsson back in the month of November surprised its users by announcing free 50 GB of cloud based storage from Box.net but later backtracked. However, now it has finally made the free 50 GB free Box.net Cloud Storage space available to all its Xperia smartphone users.
So under this festive offer, all Xperia users can simply download the Box.net application on their smartphones to enjoy 50 GB of cloud based storage which is otherwise available for a premium price only. Existing Box.net users can also download the application and the free 50 GB storage space will be added to their existing accounts.
Xperia user can store, retrieve and edit files on Box cloud storage through their smartphone or any device they choose. So basically this service is not just meant for the users to be used on the smartphones only but can be used across a wide range of devices including personal computers as well.
Sony Ericsson has LED down its Xperia users once and this time they are taking extra precautions to make sure that the service is working flawlessly throughout the globe.
To make use of this survive, users just have to simply download the Box application from the Android Market. Log in to your Box account (or create one) from any Xperia Android handset before December 31st 2012, and you will get the free storage worth 50 GB.
Vodafone most admired telecom brand online: Survey
Drizzlin Media, a social media consultancy, has released the results of its survey on the most admired telecom brands based on social media conversations.
According to the survey, Vodafone is the most admired telecom brand online with a score of 117.57 points. This brand was admired most for its ads and promotional messaging. In terms of products and services, BSNL Mobile is most admired.
However, in terms of customer service, MTNL scored the highest while Vodafone was at the bottom of the stack.
The survey also showed that despite the popularity of Facebook, only two telecom brands Tata Indicom and Vodafone are active on it.
The survey monitored 10 telecom brands on six online platforms: blogs, Twitter, social networks (Facebook and Orkut), forums, YouTube and Mouthshut. About 7000 conversations were taken as a sample, of which relevant ones numbered 1631. Of the conversations where gender could be identified, 83 per cent were by men and six per cent were by women.
Another revelation of the survey was that telecom companies in India are limited in their engagement of customers online.
“We chose to analyse the buzz around telecom companies in India as the first of our surveys since telecom is a consumer intensive industry. Since the industry is so competitive, it becomes essential for telecom companies in India to understand what their consumers say about them online as it directly impacts subscriber numbers, reputation and revenues,” says Deepak Goel, chief executive officer, Drizzlin, in a statement.