Micromax, Aircel team up to grow data market

Mobile handset maker Micromax and telecom operator Aircel, who are both struggling for greater market share in their respective fields , hitched their wagons to each other on Wednesday in a strategic partnership that is aimed at driving data growth and the sale of mobile phones.

“What we are essentially doing is leveragin

g on each other’s strengths. Micromax phones will come bundled with an Aircel SIM, and we will start carrying their phones across our retail stores,” said Sankara Narayanan K, Strategic Business Unit Head, Aircel, while addressing a press conference here on Wednesday.

“This alliance includes the whole range of Micromax and Aircel products,” he added.

The partnership, however, goes deeper. Micromax smartphones that are sold will now be accompanied by an Aircel SIM card that will offer local calls at one paisa for two seconds, STD calls at one paisa/second and 2GB of free data every month.

This offer, along with other similar offers for feature phones and dongles, is valid for three months.

These heavily discounted data and voice rates will only be available as an option to buyers of new Micromax phones however.

Micromax, which sells 2.3 million smartphones every month, is expecting a big boost in growth due to this alliance, according to Ajay Sharma, Smartphone Division Head, Micromax.

“This is the first time we’ve done something like this. We chose Aircel because it is very focussed on data. We may also look at undertaking regional marketing strategies together,” Mr. Sharma said.

For Aircel, on the other hand, this alliance amounts to a huge number of new Aircel SIMs hitting the market every month.

“The trick here is the dual SIM nature of the phones. We’re hoping for a hit rate, which is the percentage of customers that take up the Micromax-Aircel bundle, of 70 – 80 per cent in markets where we are strong. The plan is for customers to get used to the quality and strength of our data services,” Mr. Narayanan said.

iPhones 5s and 5c sell 9m in record weekend

Apple shrugged off its critics, and analysts who said the high-end smartphone market was saturated, by announcing it has sold nine million iPhones in just three days.

The company's share price jumped more than 5% to $492 in response, adding $4bn to its value in minutes - though it remains well below its all-year high of $543 from January.

The figures are nearly double the record figure of five million in 2012, when it introduced the iPhone 5.

Though the company did not release a sales breakdown between the new iPhone 5s - which incorporates a fingerprint reader - and the cheaper, and coloured, 5c, data from Mixpanel, a mobile analytics company, suggests the breakdown was 2:1 in favour of the pricier devices. Anecdotal evidence suggests that the new "gold" iPhone 5s - deemed ugly by some - was the most popular model.

Tim Cook, Apple's chief executive who under Steve Jobs drove the operational side of the business - and built up its supply systems so that it could cope with colossal spikes in demand like the weekend's - expressed his delight.

"The demand for the new iPhones has been incredible, and while we've sold out of our initial supply of iPhone 5s, stores continue to receive new iPhone shipments regularly," Cook said in a statement. "We appreciate everyone's patience and are working hard to build enough new iPhones for everyone."

The sales figures put the struggles of rival phone makers Nokia and BlackBerry into sharp focus. The value of iPhones sold was calculated at more than the enterprise value - the price minus cash - of Nokia's handset business, sold to Microsoft for €5.4bn earlier in September. And BlackBerry, which is preparing to formally announce a $1bn loss on Friday, managed to ship only 3.7m phones in the past three months.

The sales come despite a German hacker group claiming to have fooled the fingerprint reader on the iPhone 5s with a scanned version of a fingerprint captured from glass, and reports of security vulnerabilities on some features.

Apple also said that its new iOS 7 software has been installed on 200m devices since its launch last Wednesday - which it called "the fastest software upgrade in history".