Former Apple CEO John Sculley to launch smartphone brand in India; to sell ... - Times of India ~ Electronic Gadgets

NEW DELHI: John Sculley, the man who fired Steve Jobs, is targeting India's growing smartphone market by selling handsets at Rs 12,000 and less, starting next month. InflexionPoint, an investment and acquisitions company promoted by Sculley, has hired Ajay Sharma, former head of smartphones at Micromax, to head the Indian operations. Sharma had earlier worked with HTC India.

Sculley, who was the CEO at Apple between 1983 and 1993, will fund the venture, Sharma told ET. The investments will flow into Dragon Technology, a distribution company owned by InflexionPoint in China. It will oversee production and supply chain of smart devices coming into India.

"Both of us were exploring opportunities and he (Sculley) thought that India is a good market for smartphones," Sharma said. "The name of the brand will be decided next week and the first of the Android smartphones will be launched by mid-April." An email sent to InflexionPoint seeking confirmation on Sculley's level of participation in the venture remained unanswered. Apple and Sculley's ventures may compete in different price bands and it will be interesting to see who wins a chunk of market share in the country.

Sculley's former employer, Cupertino, San Francisco-based Apple, which has handsets mostly in the higher price bands, is also trying to grow its share in India.

Smartphone sales grew more than two-and-half times to 44 million devices in 2013 from 16.2 million in 2012, according to research firm IDC India.

Apple has launched attractive installment and buyback schemes to boost its currently negligible share in the market dominated by Samsung and closely followed by home-bred handset makers Micromax and Karbonn.

Surging smartphone sales in India have been propelled by the introduction of low-end devices by international and local vendors.

Mobile company to stress on quality control

The introduction of low-end devices has narrowed the price gap between smartphones and feature phones, which offer basic Internet capabilities and are a notch above basic phones. Sculley and his team are targeting the affordable smartphones segment in India with devices that cost less than Rs 12,000.

Being based out of China, Dragon Technology will work with device makers in China on a daily basis ensuring quality control and production checks while working with suppliers to get the handsets into India. This will give the brand an advantage over others in India where most local smartphone makers only import completely built units for sale here without adding much value to the final product.

The smartphone brand won't be just another addition to the cluttered market as it will create a differentiation based on price, product, software and built-in services, Sharma said. "The smartphone share of the handset market in India will keep on rising. So everyone has scope to grow. We feel that it is the right time to launch a new brand as the market is set to explode," Sharma added.

Indians bought around 15 million smartphones in the October-December period, registering year-on-year growth of 181%, according to IDC. Samsung, Micromax and Karbonn cornered 64% of the sales in the three months through December.

"There definitely is room, especially for a non-Indian brand. It helps if the company is the kind that invests in in-house product development and keeps its ODM (original device maker) dependency to a minimum," said Jayanth Kolla, co-founder and partner at telecom research firm Convergence Catalyst. Sharma said 15 people had already been hired to man sales and support distribution in India.

Within six months, about 100 people will be taking care of the backend and front-end sales of the devices as the Indian unit will leverage all available retail channels, including large format stores and online shopping portals.

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