It is raining smartphones in India and interestingly, the new entrants are choosing the online marketplace to expand their reach and cut the distribution cost. It is now the turn of Finland based company Jolla to introduce their smartphone via India’s largest e-commerce marketplace Snapdeal.com. Jolla has partnered with Snapdeal to sell their Jolla smartphone running on its independent operating system, Sailfish OS, whihc is based on the heritage of Meego, an open source operating system formerly developed by Nokia among others.
The Jolla smartphone has distinct button-less design, unique Sailfish OS gesture-based user experience, and Android application compatibility. This smartphone will be available in India exclusively on Snapdeal.com within a month.
Commenting on their decision to enter India via Snapdeal, Sami Pienimäki, Co-founder and CMO of Jolla, said,“India is the rising smartphone market of the world and we look forward to welcoming many new Jolla fans across the country. Since late 2011 when we established the company Jolla, we have received a tremendous amount of interest from India to enter this great market. In particular we have found it very encouraging how much there is interest and trust for mobile heritage coming from Finland, and what kind of development opportunities there are to start to develop e.g. local applications for India. We are super excited to be partnering with the market leader Snapdeal, who has extensive reach in the booming online commerce market of India. Through this position, we are confident to reach those interested in a true alternative to the mainstream players.”
It is very exciting times for Indian consumers to get variety of smartphones at very competitive prices. This trend was started by Motorola when they lacunced their Moto G at very aggressive pricing followed by Moto E exclusively via flipkart. This marketing strategy was taken forward by Asus and recently Xiaomi which also has partnered with flipkart to sell their smartphones. Amazon India is also selling Samsung’s Galaxy K Zoom smartphone exclusively. Now, Jola has entrusted the job of selling to Snapdeal.
Kunal Bahl, Co-founder & CEO, Snapdeal.com comments on this exclusive partnership: “We at Snapdeal.com constantly endeavor to offer high quality products across varied categories to our 25 million+ users at best prices. The smartphone category has been getting an extremely encouraging response on our platform. However the market in India offers few choices in terms of mobile operating systems. Jolla with its innovative Sailfish OS introduces an entirely new user experience to consumers. Jolla offers a unique smartphone experience both in terms of hardware and software. We look forward to a long term and mutually beneficial relationship”.
