With the advent of various high profile Chinese smartphone makers in India, Micromax has been steadily losing its market share. Feature phones still have a significant customer base in India. However, they are mostly ignored by the Chinese companies. Micromax sees this as a lucrative opportunity. The upcoming 4G VoLTE feature phone is targeted at these ignored entry level mobile users. There is another significant advantage to Micromax. It dominates the offline mobile market of India. This is where the majority of feature phone user buy their devices from. So, it will be much easier for Micromax to sell its cheap feature phone in huge volumes.
The concept of bringing 4G VoLTE facility to affordable feature phones is not new. Reliance Jio has been fiddling with this for the last few months, and we are expecting an announcement to happen anytime now. Just like Micromax, LYF’s device is assumed to cost between Rs. 999 to Rs. 1,500. It will be interesting to see which company launches the first 4G VoLTE feature phone in India. Other than this, Micromax is also planning to bring an ultra-cheap Android smartphone in the country. The handset will cost around Rs. 3,300 and support 4G VoLTE out of the box. We are yet to have our hands on the specification of the said device. However, considering its price, it will be a barely minimum of what is required to run the operating system correctly.
