The Chinese telecom giant G’Five made a splash across the net in April when it unveiled its plan of introducing a budget Android device. Pegged at Rs.10,000, G' Five tablet was touted as the tablet, set to shatter the tablet price barrier.


However the release of the tablet has been marred with delays since then. Arshit Pathak, MD, Kingtech Electronics (group company of G'Five international) attributed it to the changing tablet market space, rapidly growing industry and consumer expectation. "We were ready with our tablets in the month of June itself," he states adding however, "twice we realized that the products we are going to offer in the market can be much better and much cheaper."

Now with the affirmative timeline for the tablet set for this calendar year,  Know Your Mobile gets all the detail on the highly anticipated tablet and what will make it stand out in the crowd.

KYM: We have been hearing about the G’Five tablet for long. We last heard about it in an August press release, which stated that the tablet would be released in September. What is the current status of the tablet?

Arshit Pathak: Our whole idea is to offer a product, which is much better and much cheaper. The tablet industry is pretty competitive. There are chances that if we launch product A; someone might come out with version B that would make our product obsolete. In fact, two of our products, which we were ready to launch, we actually had to kill. But, we are ready now. Very soon you would see an announcement from us. We are going to offer a real good-quality product soon.

KYM: How soon would be that?

Arshit Pathak: Possibly if not in October, then in November. But this calendar year will definitely see the launch of the G’Five tablet.

KYM: What kind of specs are we looking at regarding the tablet?

Arshit Pathak: We are looking at both Windows and Android operating systems. We are also exploring both the sizes – 7-inches and 10-inches. Furthermore, when we started we were only looking at 1 or 2 models, which would have been only Wi-Fi. But, we realized that the way the Wi-Fi penetration is, it will be a huge incapability of our device if we offer them just Wi-Fi. Although, even 3G penetration is not that high, I believe that the money that has been put into this segment, it will definitely have mileage. The product that we are looking at will boast of both Wi-Fi and 3G along with all the normal specs of a tablet.

KYM: You are targeting the budget tablet market. What makes the G’Five tablet stand out amongst so many other products in the market?

Arshit Pathak: Well, in the last 4-5 months, since we started following the tablet market, we have had our own moments of truth. The consumer behavior with regard to tablets has changed tremendously. When we started taking the tablet market seriously, the tablet was considered just an add-on device.

Now, it has transformed into an enhanced multimedia device. The tablet has, created a new segment but banks on the existing consumers. Our vision regarding the tablet is that there is a very large population, which comprises of people who still need to go to a cyber café to check their mails. We also realized that in India particularly, people access Internet more on their mobiles than on other devices. Still you cannot call the internet experience on mobile a wholesome experience. Our idea is to provide a consumer who is shelling out Rs 7000-8000 for a smartphone a better multimedia device by paying just 1000 Rs. extra.

KYM: Tablets such as the Reliance 3G Tab and the Beetel Magiq come with bundled offers. Is G’Five planning to come up with something along the same lines?

Arshit Pathak: Operators today are very interested in the tablet market. Data is a big selling point. They want to move from an only voice customer to a data customer. We are currently in talks with some of the operators. I believe that a smartphone or a tablet always has the possibility of a bundled offer with the operator.

KYM: You are working around Cloud? Tell us about it.

Arshit Pathak: We are trying to offer people an option to store all their data in a cloud. Not only that, we are also working on providing people the ability to download from a cloud. Our cloud service, the G-cloud is already operational in China. What we are looking at is integrating it to the needs of the Indian consumer.  Indian markets are slightly more complicated than other markets. Our need for content is very different from other international markets.

Very soon, we will make an announcement to that effect.