By IANS
New Delhi : India’s largest consumer exhibition on mobile phones and accessories – Mobile Asia 2008 – Sunday attracted tens of thousands of gizmo geeks and enthusiastic traders at the capital’s sprawling Pragati Maidan.
Organised by the Indian Cellular Association (ICA), the exhibition has witnessed over 35 new mobile handsets launch so far by leading companies such as i-mate, Intex, LG, Samsung and Sony Ericsson.
Over 150,000 people have visited the expo so far, which is on till Monday. This year the exhibition’s focus is on GenNext.
“Every year I make it a point to visit Mobile Asia. This year they got delayed but thank God they at least organised it. I come here with my friends to check out the latest offers and hopefully will end up buying one,” said Nilotpal Baruah, a second-year engineering student.
Some of the leading mobile handset manufacturers and service providers like Airtel, Vodafone, LG, Motorola, Nokia, Samsung, i-mate, Intex, Leuci, SanDisk, Scratchgard, Sony Ericsson, Tata Teleservices, World Phone and World Space Radio participate in the event.
Eye-catching attractions are present all over the place to please the inquisitive visitors.
From Samsung’s Metal Man, which is to promote the Metal series, at the entrance to the game shows, quiz, puppet shows and other exciting things, all make up for the fun element.
“I have just bought a Nokia phone and I plan to buy a Motorola for my boy-friend, it’s cool. This place offers so many options under one roof, which I think is just great,” said 23-year-old Suchetna Khatri.
India is the world’s fastest growing mobile phone market with lowest call tariffs of below two US cents.
The country added a whopping 8.77 million new mobile phone subscribers last month with the total number of telephone subscribers reaching 242.40 million, according to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI).
India has set a target of 500 million telecom users and 20 million broadband subscribers by 2010.