Sheth also claimed that over 1.70 lakh units of Realme 3 were sold online in less than eight minutes of its first online sale.Realme 5G devices will be ready before the telecom operators in India start offering their 5G network services, Realme India CEO Madhav Sheth has told news agency IANS. However, Sheth did not give out an exact timeline of when the company’s 5G devices will be unveiled.
Even as telecom operator gear up to launch their 5G services in India, the technology will not arrive until 2020. TRAI Secretary S K Gupta had previously said that the telecom sector in India will move to 5G by 2020, as per a PTI report. Meanwhile, big players in India like Bharti Airtel, Vodafone, and Reliance Jio are expected to start their 5G trials soon.
So far, big guns like Samsung, OnePlus, and Xiaomi have announced their 5G phones, though the devices are yet to be launched in India. Samsung Galaxy S10 has a 5G variant, which is limited to the US market for now, while OnePlus 7 Pro 5G will be available in a Finland and UK. Xiaomi’s Mi Mix 3 supports 5G as well.
Sheth also claimed that over 1.70 lakh units of Realme 3 were sold online in less than eight minutes of its first online sale, which was held on March 12, 2019. Realme 3 was launched in India earlier this year at a starting price of Rs 8,999. The phone has a 48MP rear camera and it competes with Xiaomi’s Redmi Note 7 Pro.
The company, which itself is almost a year old in India, aims to sell around 1.5 crore units of Realme phones in the country by the end of 2019. Still, Realme managed to grab six per cent market share in Q1 2019 with 6.6 million smartphone shipments, according to data from International Data Corporation (IDC). It is among the top five smartphone vendors in India after Xiaomi, Samsung, Vivo, and Oppo.
Also read: Realme 3 review: Big on specifications, is it able to deliver on performance?
The focus of Realme in India is the budget segment, which has helped it grow in India. It launched as a sub-brand of Oppo last year, though the company claims to have split from the company and now functions independently. It recently made its debut in China with Realme X and Realme X Lite phones, which are powered by Snapdragon 710 and ship with pop-up front camera setup.
