Olive Telecom to Announce First Smartphone for India This Month

It’s a regular smartphone downpour in the country and post MWC 2011 (Mobile World Congress), we’ll be seeing even more entries, but that’s not the till the 14th of February. At the moment our sources in the proverbial 'grapevine' have reached out with a snippet of very interesting news on the Indian smartphone front. It seems that Olive, the guys who brought us our first tablet i.e. the OlivePad, is gearing up to announce what they’re saying is ‘the first Indian HSPA+ smartphone’. Sounds exciting? Not really. But what we've heard is that there's more to it than just being another smartphone (in all probability Android powered) device.

The reason I’m going with Android is rather obvious, their biggest competitors are the likes of Spice , Micromax, Videocon and the like who already have their Android devices out and circulating. Micromax is seemingly in the lead thanks to over zealous advertising and marketing. Android is also turning out to be the biggest thing in the mobile and tablet space these days taking over from Nokia’s Symbian platform, which was once the Indian people’s primary choice.

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Hopefully a pleasant surprise

Considering Olive’s device is said to have HSPA+ support and Qualcomm is also part of the deal, we could be looking at another Android powered device that could be equipped with Froyo out-of-the-box or, dare I say it, even Gingerbread (fingers crossed). If they were to compete with the group they’d have to offer a substantial USP to the community which could also be in the form of competitive pricing. In this case they’d be up against Samsung’s upcoming Galaxy Pop (Froyo equipped) that’s already being offered by Flipkart at just Rs. 8,999 and there’s also the Micromax A60, which is still in 2.1 Eclair phase, but quite competitive in the price bracket.

Our sources also talked about the device's USP being something we’ve been waiting for awhile and a device unlike any we’ve experienced in the country to date. Could this actually be the announcement for an Android 2.3 aka Gingerbread loaded handset? Quite possibly. Another Froyo enabled handset really wouldn't be too impressive at this stage. But we’ll find out soon enough though as the event is being held in Delhi on the 9th of this month.