What has been the Android indian 4 dollars? – Hypertext

In February of this year, many media have proclaimed that buy an Android for $ 4 it was possible, and not quite right. The Freedom 251 manufactured by a Ringing Bell, a terminal with Android 5.1, a 4-inch screen, 1GB of RAM, and a chip 4 cores, began to be promoted in India for 251 rupees, that the change they are 3,25 € . Measures of this type, more than to sell a lot, they end up causing the public to think about the truth that everything that happens in those 3,25€ is the benefit for manufacturers traditional, a little bit like the Nexus 4 in the high-end.

The situation obviously could not be explained only with the fact that smartphones have become a commodity. Like Google did with the above mentioned Nexus, Ringing Bell do not earn money with the terminal, but admitted to losing 140 to 150 rupees per unit, that is to say, about two euros. It is not an excessive amount, but makes it clear that the business model with the terminal is not based on obtaining a benefit. With this in mind, it is interesting to review how you have given the events around the controversial terminal.

The Freedom 251 it started to be sold officially on the 30th of June of this year, with a pledge of stock of 200,000 units. However, the company announced in July that it had only distributed 5,000, despite the fact that the reserves were much larger. Later Ringing Bells promised to put in the hands of the consumer 65,000 more, and since then has not returned to know most of them, despite the fact that the company now officially distributed on Amazon other product since a couple of months, in this case televisions.

No one knows, therefore, where are the 130,000 smartphones. But the worst is not that, but the company estimated that it had sold two and a half million terminals before June 30, when he began to promote the Freedom 251 in February. And their estimates do not were short, because through the system of reservations, that could not withstand the traffic and fell down, received 70 million requests. To see the monster he had created, the company began making massive cancellations.

For western markets the launch of a terminal so it would have been a great surprise, but in India was a revolution. In a market cornered still for feature phones and by smartphones of between 50 and 80 dollars, the possibility of acquiring something similar by 4 it was too tempting not to buy en masse.

Hypertext has attempted to resolve some doubts about the launch and the distribution of Freedom 251 by contacting the Ringing Bell, but for the moment no signs of life. In the end, the case of this terminal is what it seemed at the beginning, a way to call attention about the brand and trying to get funding from the Government through programs of support to the technological development.