Gadgets
How Nokia Brand Licensee HMD Global Is Trying to Compete in India
On this week’s episode of Gadgets 360 podcast Orbital, host Akhil Arora along with Senior Reviewer Aditya Shenoy talk with HMD Global Vice President for India and the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) Sanmeet Singh Kochhar to understand the company’s achievements and learn how it is trying to triumph against the fierce competition coming from Chinese players including Realme and Xiaomi.
Kochhar talks about the Nokia C, Nokia G, and Nokia X series that HMD Global has brought as a replacement to its earlier numeric range of smartphones. While the Nokia C series is targeted at first-time smartphone users, the Nokia G series carries unique features such as two–three days of battery life and software updates promise. The Nokia X series, on the other hand, is designed to push the boundaries and include support for technologies such as 5G connectivity, the executive says.
He also points out that HMD Global considers the Rs. 10,000–16,000 bracket as an important market segment. It already has models including the Nokia 3.4, Nokia 5.4, Nokia G10, Nokia G20, and the Nokia C30 in that segment.
However, instead of planning to bring a massive range of phones quite aggressively — something that we have so far seen with the likes of Realme, Oppo, and Xiaomi — HMD Global wants to focus on both software and hardware as its unique selling points (USPs).
“We have a very different take to this we believe while hardware innovations are important and are going to continue to move forward with that. But at the same time, software, security, privacy, all of these aspects play a very, very important role,” Kochhar tells us.
The executive also notes that apart from smartphones, HMD Global also has a strong base in the 2G feature phone market in India.
Last year, the company introduced the Nokia 5310 XpressMusic (2020) as its feature phone that was targeted at music lovers and people looking at digital detox. Kochhar says that thousands of the Nokia 5310 XpressMusic (2020) units were sold online.
To bring a distinctive experience to the market, HMD Global recently launched the Nokia XR20 as its rugged phone. Kochhar encourages our podcast listeners to experience the ruggedness of the phone by dropping it in real life.
“We have demo phones [Nokia XR20] in select stores. I would encourage you to go there… hold that device in your hand, try to drop it on the floor,” he says.
In the coming days, HMD Global is planning to launch the Nokia T20 tablet in India. Kochhar tells us that the launch will happen “around the Diwali timeframe.” The tablet debuted globally just earlier this month.
HMD Global has been manufacturing its phones for some time. Kochhar says that the Nokia C3, Nokia C01 Plus, and the Nokia C20 Plus were the phones that were not just manufactured locally in the country but were also designed specifically for the Indian market. He adds that the company is also looking to export its locally made phones to other markets in the coming future.
We also talk about how the COVID-19 pandemic impacted HMD Global and the smartphone market as a whole. Additionally, the discussion touches upon how the company is working towards retaining consumers’ trust and value on the Nokia brand. You can catch all this and listen to our full conversation with Kochhar by pressing the play button on the embedded player above.
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“At Xbox, we believe that with better tools, creators can make even more extraordinary games,” Haiyan Zhang, GM, Xbox Gaming AI, said in a blog post. “This partnership will bring together: Inworld’s expertise in working with generative AI models for character development, Microsoft’s cutting-edge cloud-based AI solutions including Azure OpenAI Service, Microsoft Research’s technical insights into the future of play, and Team Xbox’s strengths in revolutionizing accessible and responsible creator tools for all developers.”
The aforementioned AI design copilot is a toolset that will help game designers turn prompts into scripts and dialogue trees. In contrast, the character runtime will enable dynamically generated plot beats and quests. We’ve already seen heavy AI integration in games by way of procedural generation — a more recent example being the 1000+ planets in Starfield. Not to mention, enemy AI has been around for way longer.
Inworld made headlines in August when it launched a modded story mode for Grand Theft Auto V, Sentient Streets, in which players had to investigate the rise of a bizarre AI-worshipping cult — a segment loaded with characters that spoke in AI-generated dialogue, on the fly. The mod was later taken down by publisher Take-Two, leaving a permanent strike on the creator Bloc’s YouTube channel. As per The Verge, Inworld’s AI technology can also be used for narration in top-down RPGs to warn players about any events awaiting off-screen and respond to questions like we’ve seen in the past year with AI chatbots like ChatGPT and Bing Chat. Microsoft has also been heavily banking on artificial intelligence, having made a $10 billion (about Rs. 83,254 crore) investment in OpenAI. The company has also integrated AI tools into its popular suite of services and also added an AI copilot to Windows.
Despite being a Microsoft-affiliated AI toolset, it would be interesting to see whether titles using them will be allowed to thrive on other platforms. In July, Valve claimed that it would be cracking down on games that included AI-generated assets if the developer didn’t own the copyright to the piece of art. For the uninitiated, when you insert a prompt to create something in AI, the software simply repurposes existing assets found online and mushes them together — basically stealing from other artists and writers without appropriate commercial licenses. Infringing them would lead to the game not being distributed on Steam, forcing the developers to seek proper licenses for the asset by reaching out to the AI companies involved. It’s unclear how Microsoft’s partnership will play out — as long as AI content is being used as a catalyst to innovate and create something new, it should be fine.
In a post on X shared by BSNL’s Andhra Pradesh (@bsnl_ap_circle) unit, the company confirmed that BSNL users can upgrade their older 2G or 3G SIMs to a 4G SIM for free. Not only will the upgrade be free, but a promotional image shared with the post suggests that users who opt for the upgrade will also receive 4GB of free data that will be valid for three months. It is speculated that BSNL is aiming to boost its upcoming 4G services with this offer. The announcement was first spotted by Telecom Talk.
To access the free data offer and the free upgrade, BSNL users are requested to get in touch with executives at BSNL’s Customer Service Centre, franchisee or retailer stores, or contact one of their Direct Selling Agents (DSA). The promo image also adds in a finer print that the offer is available with certain terms and conditions, but hasn’t detailed any, so far.
Reliance’s Jio recently launched the 4G-supported Bharat B1 feature phone in India. The handset is priced at Rs. 1,299 in India. Alongside 4G connectivity, the phone comes with JioCinema and JioSaavn applications pre-installed.
The Jio Bharat B1 is equipped with the JioPay application, which is said to allow users to make UPI payments. Aiming to increase accessibility, the phone supports 23 languages overall, including multiple regional languages.
Realme, via Weibo, announced the arrival of the Realme GT 5 Pro in China. The display of the handset is confirmed to offer 3000 nits peak brightness. It has also been teased to offer heat dissipation with a surface area of around 10,000mm2. It is confirmed to ship with Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 SoC. The post doesn’t specify the exact launch date of the smartphone, however, given the release of the teasers, the launch could be just around the corner.
The Realme GT 5 Pro has been in the news a lot lately. It is expected to feature a 6.78-inch (1,264×2,780 pixels) AMOLED display and is tipped to come in 8GB, 12GB, and 16GB RAM options along with 128GB, 256GB, 512GB, and 1TB inbuilt storage options.
For optics, the Realme GT 5 Pro is said to have a triple rear camera unit comprising two 50-megapixel sensors and an 8-megapixel shooter at the rear. The camera setup might include a Sony LYTIA LYT808 sensor, an OmniVision OV08D10 secondary sensor, and a Sony IMX890 telephoto sensor. For selfies, there could be a 32-megapixel sensor at the front. It is said to carry a 5,400mAh battery with support for 100W wired charging and 50W wireless charging.
The Realme GT 5 Pro is expected to come with upgrades over Realme GT 5. The latter was launched in China in August with a price tag of CNY 2,999 for the base model with 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage.
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