Qualcomm to launch smartphones soon

Mobile chipset maker company Qualcomm is in talks with vendors and Original Equipment Manufacturers to launch Smartphones in the country at a price tag of Rs 10,000 by next year.

"We are working with our OEMs to bring to market smartphones with full in-built HSDPA (advance version of 3G mobile functions) next year," Qualcomm India and South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation President Kanwalinder Singh told PTI.

He said Qualcomm would work with OEM partners to make smartphones a mass-use product. Qualcomm has OEMs partners like ZTE, Huawei, LG, Samsung, HTC.

Smartphones are full-featured mobile phones with personal computer like functionality with camera and email capabilities with a complete personal organiser.

It is ideal for customisation with the ability to add-on applications and also edit and share popular business applications like documents, spreadsheets and presentation files.

The current price of smart of from most of the branded vendors are over Rs 15,000 and this has discouraged these high-end phones' mass usage.

Smartphones are increasingly becoming popular among the mobile subscribers, who want to remain accessible to their office mails and connected to the Web.

Though 3G services are yet to enter the country due to policy delays, Qualcomm is already gearing up to provide the end-devices at affordable rates.

Canada based RIM's smartphone Blackberry already has few lakh users in the country. Recently Apple Inc tied up with Vodafone and Airtel to launch their popular iPhone in the country by the year end.