Some australian company named Kogan is releasing two android phones which look a lot like blackberries. One of them retails at US $190 WITHOUT contract. Perhaps it could be the first budget android mobile ?
*www.gsmarena.com/kogan_agora_is_the_worlds_second_androidbased_smartphone-news-700.php
^ it retails @ that price in Australia (290odd AUD, acc to the site) but the problem is you cant directly convert that USD figure into INR!!
if i remember correctly, iPhone's prices are also not a direct conversion from USD to INR.
ya thats not the actual price in India. There will be addition of taxes, etc.
By the way iphone was cheap in US coz it was subsidized by AT&T with two year contract.
This is supposed to be WITHOUT any vendor lock. And 299AUD is equal to 190USD which is equal to Rs. 9,500 at Rs. 50/$.
@MetalheadGautham,
you are not getting the point... you cant simply convert the cost from USD to INR (even if 1 USD == Rs 100.)
there is a whole lot of other issues (read TAXES) and so i cant see that phone selling at <10 k
I am just comparing it by referencing with another popular product in the same price range. Didn't the AMD Radeon HD4850 come with a launch price of 200$ and came to India for 10K and is now stable at the same price ? Surely 190$ launch price may translate to around 10K in India too ?
Well, I am sure the chinese people will win this race too. There is already one model demo'ed called "Qibi" or something like that in China which runs on android. I am sure it will be cheaper than kogan's android phone.
Chinese phone running android ? I suppose that may soon become the most popular way to run Android. Chinese phones already never have licenced software, but since android does not need a licence, and they are known to produce damn cheap hardware, it wouldn't be a miracle if they produce a 100$ device which can run android.
Yes, I am expecting a 6-7k Chinese phone running android soon. Although that would be cool, I guess it would suck in terms of touch-screen quality and a poor-performing processor.
