Celkon Campus A35K With Android 4.4 KitKat Launched at Rs. 2,999

Celkon has launched its first and also India's cheapest Android 4.4 KitKat smartphone, the Campus A35K, at Rs. 2,999.

The company has announced that the Campus A35K will be exclusively available on Snapdeal. However, at the time of writing this post, the Campus A35K was listed as 'sold out' with no word on further availability.

The Indian smartphone market has suddenly been crowded with Android 4.4 KitKat smartphones and we can credit Motorola for kicking off the trend with its popular budget Moto E smartphone.

Currently, Micromax has three smartphones running Android 4.4 KitKat that include the Canvas Entice, Micromax Unite 2, and Canvas Engage, while Lava recently launched its Iris X1 with Android 4.4 KitKat.

The Campus A35K smartphone offers dual-SIM (GSM-GSM) support with dual standby. The budget Android smartphone features a 3.5-inch display with a HVGA (320x480 pixels) resolution. The smartphone is powered by 1GHz processor (unspecified chipset) with 256MB of RAM.

The handset sports a 3.2-megapixel rear camera with LED flash, while there is a 0.3 megapixel front-facing camera. The Campus A35K comes with 512MB inbuilt storage, and can be expanded via microSD card (up to 32GB).

Celkon's Campus A35K supports Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Micro-USB, and AGPS connectivity options. The smartphone also supports 3G connectivity - the highlight of the device at this price.

It is powered by a 1400mAh battery and will be available in Blue and White colour variants. The Campus A35K measures 119x63x10.7mm and weighs 102 grams.

Earlier in April, Celkon launched its new affordable smartphone, the Campus A125, at Rs. 6,299.

Sony is the number two smartphone manufacturer in India by value of sales, leap frogging over Apple

Samsung is the largest smartphone
manufacturer in India. But when
Sammy looks down, it no longer sees
Apple chasing it. Instead, Japanese
manufacturer Sony has surpassed
Apple to become the second largest
smartphone manufacturer in the
country. Sony has been able to leap
over the producer of the iPhone, by
concentrating on low priced handsets
in the range of 10,000 ($166 USD) Rs
to 20,000 Rs. ($333 USD). A 300 Crore
($65 million) marketing campaign also
helped.
According to research firm IDC, based
on the value of phones sold, Sony's
share of the Indian smartphone market
hit 9.1% in the fourth quarter of 2013.
While that was well behind Samsung's
43% slice of the Indian smartphone
pie, it was 2.1 percentage points
ahead of Apple's 7% share for the
three months ended in December.
Looking at the actual number of
phones sold in the fourth quarter,
Samsung was on top with a 38%
share. Micromax was next with 13%,
followed by Sony and Apple. The two
had volume shares of 5.5% and 2% of
the Indian smartphone market,
respectively.
The top phones for Sony in India
during that quarter, were the Sony
Xperia M Dual and the Sony Xperia C .
For the quarter that just ended in
March, analysts say that Sony was
hurt by Apple's re-release of the Apple
iPhone 4
in the country, as an entry-level model
priced at $375. In addition, the forked-
Android powered Nokia X could also
have been a tough challenger for
Sony's entry-level Android phones in
the region.
"Some of the top selling models for Sony
are Xperia M Dual and Xperia C priced in
this bracket, which is one of the fastest
growing segments in the Indian
smartphone market." -Manasi Yadav,
senior market analyst, IDC India

Micromax Canvas 4

Indian smartphone manufacturer Micromax has released a teaser of its upcoming handset called Canvas 4. The company has posted two teaser videos of the device on its official YouTube channel. The videos, with tagline "Can Life Be Endless," show a smartphone with a sleek body and 13MP camera.

Expected to be an update to the popular Canvas HD smartphone, the upcoming Micromax Canvas 4 is speculated to have an eight-core processor, like Samsung Galaxy S4. The YouTube channel of Micromax states that pre-bookings for the device will start from June 28.

Micromax in January said that it will launch a total of 30 smartphones this year. Since then, it has rolled out devices like Canvas HD, Canvas 3D, Canvas Music, Bolt A35 and Canvas Viva.