Alcatel Flash mulling manufacturing in India

Alcatel Flash, a brand of Hong Kong-based TCL Communication, yesterday said it was considering manufacturing operations in India to bolster its presence in the domestic market.

The company, which yesterday launched its latest handset, Flash 2, priced at Rs9,299 with e-commerce firm Flipkart, considers India as its top market in the South East Asia region. ''India is a strategic market for us. It is the top market in the South East Asia region… We are evaluating whether we should manufacture here,'' Alcatel Flash General Manager Albert Wong told PTI.

He added that though no firm plans had been worked out, the company would most likely partner with a third party to manufacture in India.

The last few months had seen a few handset makers like Xiaomi, Motorola, and Gionee start manufacturing operations in India in partnership with electronics major Foxconn.

Shipments in India, the fastest-growth market for smartphones grew 44 per cent to 26.5 million units in April-June, research firm IDC said.

According to Wong, the new product, Alcatel Flash 2 had a strong focus on mobile photography.

''We are working on building a community of enthusiasts rather than just selling phones here. We want to be more focused on the mobile photography feature… We will launch two devices next year,'' he said, PTI reported.

According to Praveen Valecha, regional director, Alcatel APAC BU Inida, the product would be available after a week from yesterday on Flipkart.

The Flash 2 handset comes with a 5-inch HD IPS display with screen resolution of 1280 x 720 pixels at 294 PPI.

It is powered by a 64-bit 8 Core 1.3GHz Cortex-A53 MediaTek MT6753 processor coupled with 2GB LPDDR3 RAM and a Mali-T720 MP4 GPU.

The handset features 16GB of internal storage, expandable up to 128GB.

The Flash 2 smartphone features a 13MP gSight rear camera with Phase Detection Autofocus (PDAF) and Realtone flash and a 5 MP front camera with autofocus and LED flash. The primary camera records FullHD 1080p video at 30fps.

Alcatel Flash 2 features a non-removable, 3,00 mAh lithium-ion battery, and runs Android 5.1 Lollipop OS out of the box. According to the company the battery delivers 25 hours of Talktime on 2G and standby time up to 25 days.