Rs. 10,000 android phone here at last ?

[MetalheadGautham]

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 ?

http://www.gsmarena.com/kogan_agora_...e-news-700.php

[red_devil]

^ 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.

[Vishal Patil]

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.

[Sumeet_naik]

Its better looking too..

[MetalheadGautham]

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/$.

[red_devil]

@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

[MetalheadGautham]

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 ?

[Pat]

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.

[MetalheadGautham]

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.

[Pat]

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.