Local support and interest is one of the most primary requirements
when it comes to the brewing and upbringing of any market in a region.
So far in our smartphone market, quite a few successful names have
popped up including some which have are already dominating a large
portion of the national industry. Voice is one of the few successful
ones too but so far, its efforts were rather obscured or diminished
behind those by others.
Now however, the company has restarted itself. It’s a new awakening
and under its parent company United Mobile, which brings with it loads
of valuable insight, is now seeking to capture some serious marketshare.
It has also announced some new smartphones.
The Devices
The initial line-up of this rekindling comprises:
- Smartphones:
- Voice V70 quad-core (Price: 20,500/-)
- V60 quad-core (Price: 19,000/-)
- V30 dual-core (Price: 11,500/-)
- Featurephones:
- V140 (Price: 2,250/-)
- V150
- and V160 (Price: 2,750/-)
The last three of these are Featurephones. As for the former three,
the V70 is undoubtedly the flagship with the V60 held back only by a
smaller screen. The rest of the package is virtually the same.
Both of the phones come with quad-core Cortex A7 processors (of
unknown chipset, most possibly MediaTek) clocked at 1.2Ghz, 12 megapixel
cameras, 1 GB of RAM and 2000+ mAh batteries and cost 20,500 and 19,000
PKR respectively.
As for the V30, it comes with a 4 inch display, a dual-core
processor, 512 MB RAM and an 8 megapixel camera. The price is almost
half as those of its brethren at Rs.11,500. Android Jelly Bean is
installed on all of the phones. Meanwhile the remaining three devices
are all pretty ordinary stuff with nothing outstanding except for the
price.
Overall, the three smartphones look quite promising and more or less the same package as those of its nemesis.
Again, as is the case with companies like these, the three
smartphones come in really attractive prices. The specs are also quite
reminiscent to the ones of its QMobile counterparts. But still, when all
said and done, the question remains: will Voice Mobile deprive QMobile
of its undisputed number 1 spot in our local industry?
With revenues of 761 million PKR last year, QMobile sits comfortably
there as the Samsung of the Pakistani market but then again, 2 years
ago, was the market situation even closer to what it is right now? We’ll
have to give them some time for that but the road to success surely
won’t be easy.
The company’s goal is clear: get amongst the top 10 companies of the
region by 2015. With a huge company looking after them with 14 years of
experience in the market, the goal might not be totally off the picture.
The markets of this region are also rather in their infancy than being
properly developed.
What will it look like in 2 years time? Who is there that can predict this with utter perfection? Only time will tell that.