$33 Firefox Phone Launched In India

davidshenba writes Intex and Mozilla have launched Cloud FX, a smartphone powered by Mozilla's Firefox OS. The phone has a 1 GHz processor, 2 Megapixel camera, dual SIM, 3.5 inch capacitive touchscreen. Though the phone has limited features, initial reviews say that the build quality is good for the price range. With a price tag of $33 (2000 INR), and local languages support the new Firefox phone is hitting the Indian market of nearly 1 billion mobile users.

Comments

33 Bucks?!?

[SternisheFan]

If I didn't already have a $300 smartphone, I'd snap one of these up in a heartbeat. It does make and receive phone calls, right? Amazing...

Re:33 Bucks?!?

[Bing Tsher E]

You can shop around and find a Virgin Mobile smartphone for $40 too. Even an Android 4 one. Then the voice/data plan is $35/mo with no contract.

Re:33 Bucks?!?

[afidel]

Or spend $149 on a Moto G on Republic Wireless, use the $25 plan and save money in less than a year (or if you don't mind just using WiFi for data go with the $10 plan and you're saving money by month 5), plus you get better service because unlike Virgin Mobile, Republic roams to Sprints partner networks.

Re:33 Bucks?!?

[afidel]

No, Republic is prepaid just like Virgin Mobile. I use plan as that's the monthly rate for that service level, in fact Republic is much more flexible than anyone else in the industry, you can change your plan twice per month, so you can be on the $10 call and text only plan and if you find yourself away from WiFi and in need of data to look up some important bit of information you can change over to the $25 3G plan, grab what you need and then revert to the $10 plan and your monthly bill will be around $11.

1 Billion Mobile Users?

[sdguero]

Umm... I guess this assuming that 80% of the people in India are smart phone users. That last i heard, smart phone usage in the USA was around 65%.

The average income in India is $1,500 USD/year vs the USA where it is $50,000 USD/year (roughly 33 times higher). $33 dollars doesn't sound like much to people in the USA, but that is 2.2% of the average Indian person's annual salary. That 2.2% number would be around $1100 outlay for the average American worker.

Perspective is everything when you try compare the consumer market between countries like the USA and India.

Re:1 Billion Mobile Users?

[Em Adespoton]

And yet... that 80% mark is probably correct to some degree. Some villages only have one cell phone that everyone shares, but in the cities, that's how people communicate.

So think of it as each person in India putting out $1100 for their phone, which they use in lieu of land line, TV and computer. Assuming it lasts as long as the Nokia phones they used to have, I can see this getting a high adoption rate, with a new phone, say, every 5 years.

Re:1 Billion Mobile Users?

[narcc]

But it's significantly less than competing smartphone alternatives in that market. The price is even lower than many feature phones (most, if you only count dual-sim models) at just Rs 2000.

It's still a big investment, sure, but you're getting a LOT more bang for your rupees.

Re:1 Billion Mobile Users?

[lippydude]

"$33 dollars doesn't sound like much to people in the USA, but that is 2.2% of the average Indian person's annual salary"

Well somebody can afford them. In 2013: 4.14 million tablets sold, nine million iPads sold and 80.57 million smart phones by year end.

Re:1 Billion Mobile Users?

[Charliemopps]

It's 1 billion mobile users, not smartphone users. When I was in Africa, everyone had a feature phone... everyone. You could buy them at Kiosks for less than $10, and phone cards to fill them with minutes. A $300 phone would be completely insane there... but a $33 phone? Yea, they'd have to save up but that's doable. Especially when a lot of people I ran into were using the feature phone like a desktop... running entire businesses off the things.

Re:1 Billion Mobile Users?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok ... Indian here. 2000 rs is very very affordable to the average urban Indian. The average day laborer in South India gets ~500 rs / day if unskilled, and ~750 rs if skilled. That is about $10 - 12 /day. They already spend between 2000 and 5000 rs on the phones today. Even though this is a substantial amount, most people still go ahead with the purchase because it is really a one time cost. On most networks incoming calls are free and outgoing is about 1rs/ minute or lower. The rental plans are about 100rs / month ... this affordability is the reason for huge adoption of mobile phones in the last few years.

Whether this particular phone would be a hit is debatable thought ... it has to compete against a lot of android-based makes and models in the same price range that exist today.

Re:1 Billion Mobile Users?

[Anonymous Coward]

So think of it as each person in India putting out $1100 for their phone, which they use in lieu of land line, TV and computer.

If you go back three years, that's pretty much what happened in Africa with the $80 Huawei Ideos Android phone.

Android phone for $80 takes Africa by storm
Huawei's Ideos phone has helped spearhead the movement, selling no less than 350,000 handsets in Kenya. Amazing given that nearly half the population makes do on less than two dollars per day.

http://www.pocket-lint.com/new...

Cheap Android phones have changed the way people work and live there, despite Android apps needing relatively beefy hardware to develop. Firefox OS and this phone will have the potential to bring the same real-life improvements, with the added advantage of a much simpler app development pathway.

Re:1 Billion Mobile Users?

[jma05]

> Some villages only have one cell phone that everyone shares

You don't seem to be talking from experience and seem to be simply conjecturing. I am in India. I have never heard of any village sharing just one cell phone. It is not even plausible. Now, it used to be, several decades ago, that there were just a handful of landlines per village. But a cell tower will not be setup unless the provider is sure that there is demand for enough to make an economic case. And there always is. Mobile phones are not expensive (but not cheaper than the cheap options in US). Mobile plans are however incredibly cheap compared to US. I know poor ($13 rent for a family of 4) families in India who have multiple mobile phones, one per working adult.

> So think of it as each person in India putting out $1100 for their phone

Poor people are not buying smartphones yet (its the lower middle class and up that is driving smart phones now). They still buy Nokia dumb phones and are now beginning to shift to cheap Android phones at $100. Firefox Phone helps by further lowering that barrier of entry. The minimum monthly talk refill plan I know is 30 *cents*... very cheap. You may not get many outgoing minutes, but you don't get charged for incoming calls, unlike US. So everyone in India who needs one, can afford a mobile phone plan.

$1100 for a phone is very expensive in India. I know several people who have them, but they are all rich. And it is often a status symbol rather than for an actual need.

> which they use in lieu of land line, TV and computer

No one in India uses a smart phone in lieu of a TV. Having cable TV (60-80 channels) in India is very cheap ($3 per month in poor neighborhoods). Indian mobile data plans start very cheap ($2) but are not robust enough to be used for routine video consumption yet. They won't be replacing TV anytime soon. Anyone who owns a $1100 mobile phone already has a pricey HDTV.

Mobile phones are also not replacing computers yet since most of the phone users, unlike US, were not computer users to begin with. People here use cheap service stations nearby, to pay bills online, where the operator sits in front of an online PC, accepts cash and pays bills for a few cents of service charge. This is much simpler for most people than using data plans and mobile web apps, for now. Around here (a small town), there is such a tiny store for every neighborhood and they provide small jobs that serve populace that is not yet computer savvy enough.

Re:VS a top of the line 3 year old phone...

[Em Adespoton]

Try to sell the Galaxy Nexus across India in volume and maybe you can tell us the answer :)

Maybe your logic is wrong...Like insanely wrong

[tuppe666]

I noticed this comment had got a five early on...basing on assumptions that the big powerful USA has all the money its smartphone ownership percentage should be highest, I find this astonishing.

The link at the bottom is linked to(Slashdot will not accept a direct link) to Googles amazing tool where TNS have released their survey data on 54 countries and ownership of smartphones, and guess what USA is only the 19th country of percentage of smartphone ownership per person, drawing with Canada. India is already at 7%, and that is without phones dropping to $30; Google is targeting India with the Android One(A reference phone) at cheaper than Motorola E prices. India already has 7% smartphones that is 85.9 Million smartphone owners(Looks Like A billion mobile users realistic)...to put that in perspective the USA has only 148.5 Million.

Tomi provides unnecessary commentary to this data. The http://communities-dominate.bl...

The ignorance of American people on the world is astonishing.

Re:Is it total shit like earlier Firefox OS phones

[nashv]

I fail to understand what you are saying. My point is that India is not a market for extremely low-end devices like the Intex shown here. In fact, Indians being too poor to own existing smartphones is a myth since it already has 87% penetration and most of those are mid-range smartphones as of today.