Brief

Reliance Communications to provide high end devices

SP Shukla, President, Personal Business, Reliance Communications and Peter Chou, CEO & President, HTC unveiling the highend range of Reliance HTC handsets

Reliance Communications announced a strategic alliance with HTC Corporation, a Taiwan based company that provides Microsoft Windows Mobile- based smart devices, to promote next generation CDMA devices in India.

Taking the first step forward under the alliance, HTC and Reliance Communications announced the launch of two new smart devices, the HTC P3000 and HTC S720. Both of the handsets promise high data speeds, strong e-mail and voice capability. The phones run on Windows Mobile 6 operating systems with an Internet speed of 144kbps and would be available at a price of Rs 16,500 and Rs 19,500 respectively.

The announcement marks HTC’s foray into the fast growing CDMA market in India, and reiterates the strategic focus of Reliance Communications to offer PDA devices on the CDMA platform for its high-end data usage customers.

“The alliance with HTC is in line with our strategic intent to provide high-end devices empowering Reliance customers to access email, Internet and data applications on the move. HTC’s technological edge and Reliance’s in-depth consumer insights would enable us to continuously offer top-of-the-line handsets catering to emerging market trends in the Indian telecom landscape,” said S.P.Shukla, President, Reliance Communications.

Shukla further added that “All the segments of the market co-exist and as a service provider we have to cater to all the segments.”

HTC’s CDMA handsets will be exclusively provided on Reliance Communications wireless network spread across 15,000 towns and 4 lakh Indian villages and claims to offer a robust line-up of services and applications for high-end mobile users.

“The partnership with Reliance Communications further strengthens HTC’s commitment to serve the growing demands of Indian consumers. In future we believe India would be one of the most important markets for HTC Asia,” said Peter Chou, CEO and President, HTC. HTC already have a similar kind of tie up with Airtel.

Amajit Gupta Director Communication and Media segment, Microsoft India commented, “Already, smart phones are being viewed as both mobile consumer Internet devices as well as imperative business productivity tools.  We are confident that with the added line up of business applications, the inherent power delivered by Windows Mobile, and the value proposition of the Reliance CDMA network, the devices will bring further maturity into the rapidly growing Smart phone market in India.”