$4 Smartphone From Indian Startup To Ship This Week

$4 Smartphone From Indian Startup To Ship This Week

Ringing Bells’ Freedom 251, a new smartphone developed by an Indian startup company that costs the equivalent of about $4, is set to ship to about 200,000 costumers by the end of the week, according to The Guardian.

The only holdup, it seems, is that the fledgling company is losing a little bit more than $2 per phone per costumer, according to reports.

That’s roughly more than $400,000 it is going to lose on the launch of its first product.

That can be a tough pill to swallow for a lot of merchants, but it’s not as though Ringing Bells didn’t expect to not lose money on the phone launch.

Mohit Goel, the company’s founder and chief executive, said to the Indian Express that he expected his company would take a hit on the launch of the phones.

He just didn’t say that it would be north of $400K.

“We will have a loss, but I am happy that the dream of connecting rural and poor Indians as part of the Digital India and Make in India initiatives has been fulfilled with Freedom 251,” Goel was quoted as saying.

The Freedom 251 is a 3G Android 5.1 smartphone with a 4-inch screen, 8-megapixel rear camera, 3.2-megapixel selfie camera, a 1.3GHz processor, 1GB of RAM and 8GB of storage and a microSD card slot that lets you add even more storage. The phone also comes Bluetooth equipped, has a pattern lock with facial recognition software and a 16 million color full capacitive 12.7cm (5″) touchscreen.

More info on the Freedom 251’s bells and whistles can be found on its website.

With such a large hit to its coffers right off the bat, it remains to be seen how successful the Freedom 251 is going to be, but it is certainly an interesting product to keep an eye on nevertheless.