Spice to launch handsets in Tamil Nadu

Spice Limited, which markets mobile handsets under its own brand name, has introduced its products in Tamil Nadu. This launch follows Spice's rollout in states in North India.

At a press conference on Tuesday, Spice's management explained that the company planned to concentrate initially on smaller centres to make a dent in a market that is dominated by the Finnish handset maker Nokia. Nokia has over three fourth of the market share in India.

Spice's approach so far has centred around offering additional features in its handset at the best possible price. The company's presentation emphasised on its attempts to tailor a handset to meet local needs (Spice is an Indian company that is a part of B K Modi group).

In its foray in North India early this year, Spice embedded a few popular Hindi movie songs as ringtones for the handset. Generally, such ringtones need to be acquired at an additional cost.

Kunal Ahooja, CEO of Spice, said that a similar approach would be followed in Tamil Nadu and Tamil movie songs are likely to be embedded as ringtones in Spice handsets.

Ahooja also said that Spice did not plan to rely on price as the main prop for its marketing. "We are not going to be the cheapest phone in the market," he said.

Spice today imports its handsets directly from its contract manufacturers located in Taiwan (a company in the Acer Group is one of its contract manufacturers). The company said its direct imports had helped reduce the acquisition price, and the accompanying benefits were passed on to the distributors.

Some of the software work for the mobile handsets are carried out in India. This had helped Spice tailor the product to local needs, said Ahooja.

Spice plans to eventually start making handsets in India. It has identified Himachal Pradesh as its manufacturing location.