Intex becomes first Indian company to launch 'Octacore' smartphone

NEW DELHI: Computer peripherals maker Intex Technologies said Monday that it had become the first local handset maker to begin selling Octacore smartphone in India which will allow users to do more with their smartphones as it offers faster processing speeds.

Octacore essentially means eight processing cores built in together, which allows users to run multiple applications at the same time without the phone coming to stand still or heating up. Multi-core chipsets are made by several companies including China's MediaTek, US-based QualComm, NVidia and BroadCom.

Delhi-based Intex has tied up with MediaTek and aims to bring the commercial form of the device in January 2014. Sanjay Kumar Kalirona, business head for mobile phones, told ET that the company was likely to price the 6-inch dual-SIM smartphone with a 7 mm thickness for around Rs 20,000.

ET has learnt that Micromax Informatics is also planning to come out with the news of launching an octa-core device sometime next year. The company did not comment on ET's queries about the device plans.

Octacore is small but fast growing segment within smartphones after Samsung launched the S4 with the Exynos 5 octa-core processor early this year. Rival handset maker Huawei, which has little presence in India, also plans to come out with smartphones on the ultra-fast processor.

International media reports quoted Huawei's president Xu Xin Quan as he wrote on his Weibo account, that the next version of the Ascend P6, the P6S, will come with a new octa-core processor.

With Indian handset makers entering the high processing game, prices of high-end handsets could come down substantially. However, it remains to be seen how many octa-core smartphones ultimately come out from the local device makers to drive any kind of scale.