4G phones in India

As Indian operators are slowly but surely laying out 4G network, they face one specific challenge which we identified earlier. There are few 4G [LTE-TDD] based phones in the market. Most of the western phone vendors have started supporting LTE-FDD looking at European and US market. Indian operators like Reliance and Airtel realized that unlike GSM and 3G phones, they cannot depend on the market for the supply of 4G phones. They have to provide their consumers 4G phone that will work with their 4G network and that too at affordable cost. So, each operator is tying up with specific phone vendors to provide 4G phone for their consumers and predictably all the phone vendors that are being tied up, so far, are Asian. While Airtel tied up with ZTE and Huawei earlier, Reliance is tying up with Samsung to provide the 4G phones for its consumers. Mukesh Ambani's RIL announced today that it tied up with Samsung to bring branded 4G phones at Rs 5500. Albeit none of these phones support VoLTE [please check my previous post for more details on VoLTE] as yet.

ZTE's android based 4G phone. specs here

It is interesting that while western phone makers are lethargic to bring out LTE-TDD phones, all Asian phone makers are scampering to launch more 4G phones this year.
Last week in Mobile World Congress, China Mobile showcased 4 LTE-TDD phones, from brands such as HTC, LG, Huawei and ZTE[news report]
We should expect more announcement on 4G phones and deployment in the upcoming 4G World conference in India, scheduled on April at Gurgaon. You can check their website for more updates at http://www.4gworldindia.com/
Incidentally Videocon took a different path for 4G. While big operators in India picked up Chinese vendors for Equipment, Videocon tied up with Nokia Siemens for 4G-based broadband. "We intend to engage Nokia Siemens Networks as our Technology partner for our 4G network roll-out in the country Videocon Mobile Services Director and CEO Arvind Bali said in a statement. He said that going forward, the company will look to provide data service (internet) experience including Video Chat, Mobile TV, HD (high definition) TV content, digital video broadcasting etc,over its 4G network. [news report]