Exclusive: Gionee Head Reveals India Plans, Amigo UI and More

| Updated: Saturday, April 5, 2014, 16:21 [IST]

The Indian market, off late, has recieved a major boost with the inflow of a number of foreign manufacturers who have recognized the country's domestic market as one that's filled with a lot of potential. And one such device maker is the China-based Gionee that looks employ a host of different business propositions that will take the company above all others in the market.

Gionee has been in news for quite some time now with the release of the Gionee Elife E7 and Gionee Elife S5.5. And recently GizBot was in an exclusive interview with Gionee president Mr. William Lu and Gionee India head Mr. Arvind Vohra.

GizBot took this opportunity to question both Mr. Lu and Mr. Vohra on what the company seeks to achieve with its handsets in the long run and how the Gionee-made devices are seeing the Indian market in terms of growth and development.

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Indian market and its importance
On asked as to why the Indian market has such an important market after the China-based one, and why the company chose India as the second market after China to promote the handset, Mr. Lu stated that "personally I have deep love for India because 15 years back I worked here" and that India is already a growing market.

"Now its number two after china-based industries but i can see it as the second influntial market in the world. So this is a huge market, an influential market and that's why we take the India market as important as the China market, and i hope that in future for Gionee the Indian market will be more important that China," he added.

Gionee policies with Elife S5.5
Later, Mr. Arvind Vohra was questioned about how numbers play a pivotal part in the company's plans and what policies it is harboring to capture the market with the new Gionee Elife S5.5. Mr. Vohra stated that the device is bound to do good in the country due to its "captivating design" which is more than enough to convincing someone on select the device.

"The product is probably the slimmest in the world, very well designed and has a beast of an engine sitting inside it to give you that consumer experience. And its within the android community plus it gives you the add-ons of what we call as a winner."

"For us, these reasons put together make this product a very very desirable value proposition," he added.

Key Features
Next, on the topic of the key features of the phone and how different it is from others in the market, Mr. Lu took up the device's Amigo UI offering, slapped on to the Android OS, and spoke about how that will offer a great pedestal for all those willing to invest on the device.

"Amigo UI for the phone is based on the Android operating system, but we have improved a lot. In Amigo there are five parts. Amigo Navy, Amigo phone, amigo care, amigo play, amigo crowd. And these five parts will keep on improving," Mr. Lu added.

"So in China, we'll provide OTA in every 2 weeks, and in india we will give every one week." He also added that while the company has its own app store in China, with every app category having its own eco-system, in India the company makes use of Google' services although offering a number of localized applications that are "superb" for the country.

Gionee Ambitions
Lastly, Mr. Vohra also spoke about the kind of confidence he has on the device with a hope that the device will do good in the Indian market. "With S5.5 we got a degree of confidence which is much higher than most of the flagships we launched. India is very stylish market, and what we have in the S5.5 is purely tangible and recognizable."

In terms of tackling the device's sales and distribution, he explained that the device was sent out to all its partners "to test it and understand what they think."

"We dont look at India market as one market but 600 plus markets since each district is a market. we have gone down to final level of detailing through each district in each shop," he added.

4G LTE
Both Mr. Lu and Mr Vohra stated that the advent of the 4G LTE technology via Gionee handsets will depend on the market demand for such devices. "If the demand is there, we can ship immidiatly," Mr. Lu stated.