Adding to the cart: Flipkart to launch Billion, its own smartphone

The firm will launch Capture+ under the Billion brand on Wednesday

Flipkart, the country's largest e-commerce marketplace, is launching its own smartphone on Wednesday.

Flipkart own smartphone : On Thursday, the company put a 'teaser' of the device on its website, showing features such as dual cameras, fast charging and unlimited cloud storage. The phone will be launched under the Billion brand and is named Billion Capture Plus . Flipkart also boasted a service network that spans 130 cities.

The teaser did not disclose the price.

Unlike major rival Amazon’s attempt at building a smartphone, which tried to compete directly with the likes of Apple’s iPhone, Flipkart is largely targeting the mid-range smartphone market. The similarity between the two companies is that both are targeting the country's most voluminous smartphone segment.

While iPhones were and are still among the best-selling smartphones in the US, prompting Amazon to go after that market, those costing between Rs 10,000 and Rs 13,000 make the largest chunk of smartphones sold online in India. What Flipkart will be aiming to do differently is actually sell some of its devices.

Launched in July 2014, Amazon’s Fire Phone was among the biggest failures in the company’s history. After spending years in research and spending millions to develop, sales never took off. Largely due to extremely experimental features that failed to catch the public fancy, which was in tune with the features of an iPhone, a Samsung Galaxy device, or a Google Nexus.

The firm has not revealed detailed specifications. The company seems to have put together a device with features customers search for the most on its platform when buying other phones, at a price point where it sees most of its action. (more)