China's Haier to launch Rs 2000 mobile handsets

New Delhi, May 31: Haier Mobiles of China today announced its entry into the Indian mobile handset market with the launch of its cellphones which are priced, starting from Rs 2000 a piece and are expected to give an aggresive price point competition to the well established players like Nokia, Siemens, LG, Samsung and Sony Ericsson.

Even the lowest priced handsets are enabled with polyphonic ringtones and have coloured display.

Haier Telecom (India) Ltd is a joint venture between the Chinese company and Nescomed Technologies Pvt Ltd from India.

''With the launch of our state of the art mobile sets comprising entry level as well as high end models, we have set a target to achieve sales of 50 lakh handsets in the first phase of the launch'' Haier Telecom India Vice Chairman and Managing Director Arun Khanna told reporters here.

The Haier mobile model D1000 has already been launched by Tata Teleservices as a part of it CDMA series.

The number of mobile phone users in India has surged to 81.1 million by the end of January 2006 according to a an estimate by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India. Tele density all over the country has increased to 11.7 per cent during the same period as compared to 8.8 per cent in January 2005.

With the current growth rates it is expected that an average of 5 million subscribers would be added every month over the next three years making India the world's second largest mobile phone market by 2008.

UNI