Apple's Former CEO John Sculley's smartphone brand to be called Obi, to launch in India in April

We recently reported that former Apple CEO John Sculley will launch a smartphone in India. The brand name will be 'Obi' and it will be launched in April. The former CEO intends on increasing his company’s IT and telecom distribution business to $1 billion in two years courtesy of the Indian market. Inflexionpoint, which has been promoted by Sculley himself will be contributing about $20 million towards setting up an outline focus, store network, deals and advertising system to start the brand in the country, which will be scaled up progressively as business enhances.

India will be the organization's first pit stop for investments, promoting and deals, before spreading the handset brand and business to developing markets in Asia Pacific, Middle East and Latin America. Singapore-based Inflexionpoint, an IT dissemination organization, is entering the portable mechanism market despite anything that might have happened before internationally.

The smartphones will be priced under Rs 12,000 and there will be feature phones as well up for grabs.

"Mr Sculley is quite excited about the project and actively provides strategic inputs. We benefit from his marketing and branding insights. He has committed to travel to India every quarter to oversee this project," said Neeraj Chauhan, who will be overseeing the Indian business and investments and is the company's Asia CEO.

Ajay Sharma will be heading the handset business and Vishal Sopory has just taken up the post of CEO of Iris Computers which is an IT distribution company and was acquired by Inflexionpoint a little while ago. Iris Computers will be disseminating the smartphones to retailers via its network in the country and its relationships with OEMs and vendors.

Singapore's Dragon Technology which is also an Inflexionpoint company in turn will be responsible for getting the devices manufactured and making them reach Iris. About $100 million have been spent in acquiring Iris Computers and Dragon Technology. John Sculley knows how things are done and the man seems to be going the right way.

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