freedom 251

So what exactly is happening?

So far, no telecom carriers have come forward to announce their partnership with Ringing Bells, so a carrier-based subsidy is off the charts.

Government subsidy was ruled out by the company at the launch event. As reported by NDTV Gadgets who were present at the launch event, Ringing Bells President Ashok Chadha confirmed that there is ‘no government subsidy’ for the Freedom 251, outside of a long time friendship with MP Murli Manohar Joshi who provided “vision and guidance” for the project. Since there is no evidence of a proper subsidy, we have to believe the company’s word on this unless proven otherwise… but government guidance/sponsorship is, however, a kind subsidy in itself.

So what’s left? The company claims that it achieves this price by “economies of scale” as well as by leveraging the product ecosystem. Ringing Bells President Ashok Chadha did mention that the cost of making one unit of the smartphone is around INR 2,000 ($30), which is believable considering one of the closest phones that we could find that seems like the original product, the Adcom Ikon 4, is on sale for INR 3,599 ($52.5). The Freedom 251 is almost a rebranded Adcom Ikon 4, albeit with a few spec changes like a downgraded camera setup and different screen resolution. To quote Ashok Chadha:

“By making in India, this price goes down by Rs 400. Then we will sell online only. So, this pulls down the price by Rs 400 further. We are sure that this smartphone will be in a lot of demand. We are assuming to save around Rs 500 from this economy of scale. At last, we wait for our platform to grow, so that we can make money from other services