Acer partners Snapdeal to restart smartphone business in India

Taiwanese IT company Acer today restarted its smartphone business in India in partnership with e-commerce firm Snapdeal with the launch of two new handsets, priced at Rs 11,999 and Rs 16,999, respectively.
"We have strong presence in IT business. IT industry is converging and at a point colliding with handset business. We want to leverage our strength of IT and smartphone business will compliment it," Acer Group's Vice President (smartphones) Allen Burnes said at the launch event.
The company launched Android Kitkat platform based Liquid Jade dual sim model for Rs 16,999 which has a 5-inch scratch resistant Gorilla glass 3 display, quad-core processor, 2 GB RAM, 16 GB internal memory and 13 megapixel main camera.

The other model, Liquid E700, priced at Rs 11,999 has a 5-inch high definition screen. The phone has slot for three sims and comes with 3,500 mAh battery which promises up to 24 hours of talk time, 60 hours of standby time, 12 hours of video viewing and 100 hours of music playback.
"India is a big market, particularly a big wireless market and soon there will be wide spread of 3G and 4G services. Not being here will be a strategic error," Burnes said.
Liquid E700 is also built on Android Kitkat platform and has a quad-core processor, 2GB RAM and 16 GB of internal storage besides a micro SD card slot for expandable storage.

The company will start selling its phones exclusively on Snapdeal from December 10.

"We are currently reaching out to about 5,000 pin code locations. Acer will be able to have large geographic reach from Day 1 of launching its products," Snapdeal Vice President for Business Strategy Abhishek Passi said.
Passi said Snapdeal is looking to double the number of sellers on its platform to 1 million in next 3 years.
"We are also reaching out to people who do not have access to Internet shopping through Fino stores. We have done pilot (project) across their 200 stores and expand our presence in phased manner to about 7,000 centres," Passi added.