John Sculley is the Ex-CEO of Apple who is famous for firing Steve Jobs in the early days of Apple. He is backing a smartphone brand, several reports claimed earlier and the brand is called Obi. Obi Mobiles has launched its operations in India according to a report. The Obi Mobiles is headed by Ajay Sharma who is Ex-Micromax employee and also worked for HTC India. The company is promoted by Inflexionpoint, an IT supply chain company which oversees the supply chain, stores, after sales service centers etc.
Obi Mobiles first smartphones will launch in India in the month of May 2014, it plans to launch phones in he range of Rs 5000 and Rs 8000. At this price range it will get competition mainly from the home grown brands like Micromax, Karbonn and others. John Sculley is investing $20 million in the venture and is quite bullish on the telecom market in India.
“We hope to sell a million units and aim to turn the venture profitable within 5 months of launch,” Scully told CNBC-TV18 in an interaction. This is quite optimistic as the range Obi Mobiles is going to sell phones is quite competitive and the gross margins are thinner and has a lot of home grown brands battling for the low cost smartphone market share. The first phones are expected next month, so we will soon know how Obi Mobiles stacks up with the rest of the mobile brands in India.
