Home grown consumer electronics firm, Intex in collaboration with the American software giant, Mozilla is set to launch an ultra low-cost Firefox smartphone in India in couple of months time.
"Intex association with Mozilla Firefox is a step towards our brand's promise to offer quality products to our consumers to improve their lives and set industry benchmarks. Intex Cloud FX is aimed at fulfilling the idea of – 'Smartphone for all' which will be priced below Rs 2000," said Sanjay Kumar Kalirona, Business Head of the Mobile vertical at Intex.
"This smartphones will be equipped with enhanced phone and browser features of Firefox OS with an access to a rich ecosystem of latest web applications improving users overall smartphone experience at affordable prices," he added.
The new Cloud FX, touted to be India's first Firefox OS powered smartphone is said to feature 3.5-inch screen, 1GHz processor, 2.0-megapixel camera, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and come with dual-SIM slots. Considering the specifications and its price, Cloud FX is likely to shake-up low-cost smartphone market just like Motorola's Moto E and lead to intense price-war among the domestic brands.
As the company pro-claims, this low-cost smartphone is targeted at first-time users, who are planning to migrate from feature phones and the timing of the launch is perfectly in-sync with dynamics of the current Indian smartphone market.
According to recent study (courtesy IDC- International Data Corporation, India), the subcontinent witnessed a record 186-percent year-on-year (Q1,2014 ) growth in smartphone sales, the most seen by any Asian country. The figure has surpassed China, (world's biggest smartphone market by volume), which registered a paltry 31-percent growth. Indian vendors reportedly sold a total of 17.59 million smartphones in 1Q 2014, compared to 6.14 million units in the same period of 2013.
"As more vendors continue to launch low priced smartphone models, the price gap between feature phones and smartphones will be narrowed, driving rampant user migration in the price sensitive Indian market," said Manasi Yadav, Senior Market Analyst, IDC India.
The new Intex-Mozilla smartphone Cloud FX is said to be focused on tier-2 and rural areas will be released in August for less than ₹2,000.
Besides Intex, another domestic brand, Spice is also slated (via BGR India) to launch a Firefox OS based dual-SIM smartphone next month. However the details regarding the specifications and price are still under wraps.
