Intel inside India smartphone market, ties up with Lava to launch XOLO

Intel on Monday announced plans to enter the fast-growing Indian smartphone market by entering into a strategic partnership with Lava International, which would introduce a smartphone running its microprocessor.

Paul Otellini, CEO of Intel made the announcement at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona and said that the move is built on similar arrangements with Motorola Mobility and Lenovo.

“We are very pleased to add new, important customers and capabilities to our phone offerings today. We remain focused on delivering exciting new features and outstanding performance to smartphone customers around the world,” said Otellini.

Underlining that the growth of smartphones in India is likely to be three times more than any other country if one goes by the statistics of the last two years, Otellini, when asked about Lava as the choice in India, said, “Why not? They appear to be good partners with whom we can do good business. We are assured of great results.” Vishal Sehgal, Lava co-founder and board director, announced the launch of XOLO smartphone.

“Over the last two and a half years, we have built our business in the feature phone segment where Lava has been the brand of choice for nearly 10 million Indian customers. We are targeting at the premium segment of the market. The XOLO X900 is based on Intel’s smartphone reference design and will be the first Intel technology-based smartphone in the Indian market,” said Sehgal.

The device, powered by a 1.6 Ghz processor would be available early in the second quarter of 2012.

(The correspondent was in Barcelona at the invitation of Huawei)