Last year, Panasonic bowed out of the smartphone market. We thought that we had heard the last of them but that is seemingly not the case. The Japanese company is still making some efforts as far as smartphones go and has a new dual-SIM smartphone set for release in the Indian market at just Rs 11,990 (around $196).
Here are the specs of the Panasonic P31:
- Display: 5-inch display (480 x 854 pixels)
- Processor: Quad-core MediaTek MT6582M chip clocked at 1.3GHz
- Memory: 8 GB internal storage with support for microSD (expandable upto 32 GB) // 1 GB RAM
- Camera: 8 megapixel camera, VGA front-facing camera
- Battery: 2,000 mAh
- OS: Android 4.2 Jelly Bean
- Others: HSPA+, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, GPS, and Bluetooth 4.0
The specs clearly reveal Panasonic’s intentions: it is focusing on the budget conscious consumer and not anyone else. Will it be successful in the highly competitive Indian market with the likes of the Motorola Moto G, the new Nokia X and traditional offerings from Samsung, Nokia, Micromax and popular homeboy Karbonn still widely popular? We’ll have to give the P31 some time to know that. Remember low cost smartphones like Nokia’s Lumia 520 and mid-rangers like the Lumia 625 being extremely popular as are the Micromax made Canvas smartphones.
According to the IDC, India’s smartphone market grew by 229% year over year in Q3 2013 with Nokia’s smartphones registering a 5% growth in market-share over the same period. The big four in India i.e Nokia, Samsung, Karbonn and Micromax in all accounted for over 30% of the Indian smartphone markets-hare and that just tells you that with the no-name China made devices taking a huge share, there is room for a new player who knows exactly what they are doing. Will Panasonic’s P31 dual-SIM smartphone help it to be that player?
