Even as the offline mobile phone retailers are up in arms against their online rivals, like Amazon and Flipkart, the ecommerce giants are only turning more aggressive. Chinese smartphone maker Oppo is taking on its rival Xiaomi by launching a sub-brand Realme and has exclusively tied up with Amazon.
The first phone in this new series, the Oppo Realme 1 can be bought only on Amazon. The sale begins May 15. With just weeks to go, there are hardly any information on the specifications and features of the new phone, though Amazon’s dedicated website for this range from Oppo, carries some details.
According to reports, the image of the back panel of the Oppo Realme 1 posted shows that the phone will have glass back panels and a diamond cut shape and design comes through. One can see the rear camera and the LED flash. Some see a resemblance to the Redmi 5A.
This phone would be bear a ‘Made in India’ tag and Oppo may fix the prices for these phones in the middle segment between Rs 10,000 and Rs 20,000. Some rumors have it that the Realme 1 in India may be a modified version of the Oppo A3 that the company launched in China only last week. There is also the speculation that this phone is meant to take on the market leader Xiaomi’s Redmi 5A. This phone is being retailed currently in India at around Rs 6,000.
The new Oppo phone in the sub-brand will receive service support from Oppo’s 500 odd service centres around the country.
If one were to go by the Oppo A3 comparison, it is a 6.2-inch display phone with an aspect ratio of 19:9 and running the latest Android Oreo version 8.1 OS with its inhouse Color 5.0 UI. With Oppo A3 being priced in China the equivalent of Rs 21,000, there is every possibility the version to be released on May 15 as Realme 1 may be a stripped-down version only.
A new crop of informed mobile phone buyers has emerged who are not really obsessed with the big brand names like Apple and Samsung and look for only features and would rather buy a 20K phone every six months instead of investing a fortune on a big brand and being tied with it for 2 years.
It is this crop of young buyers that phone brands like Oppo wish to target and position its products accordingly.