Airtel-Micromax tie up offers 1-year free 4G service on Canvas 2

New Delhi: Telecom major Bharti Airtel will offer one year free 4G service along with unlimited calling within its network to buyers of Micromax Canvas 2 smartphone that has been launched on Thursday.

"Micromax Canvas 2 will come with one year of unlimited Airtel to Airtel calling, unlimited data at no extra cost for both existing and new Airtel customers," Shubhajit Sen, Chief Marketing Officer, Micromax told reporters here.

Micromax today launched its dual SIM 4G VoLTE smartphone Canvas 2 for Rs 11,999 to foray in the device segment priced between Rs 10,000-15,000 a unit.

Under the pact, Airtel will offer 1GB of 4G data every day and thereafter the speed will get reduced, Sen said.

Customers purchasing Canvas 2 device will also get 400 minutes of calling per day to any network in India for one year with weekly limit of 1,500 minutes.

"We saw huge queues in front of the Reliance (Jio) stores when they launched 3 months free offer. For 1 year, we dont know what would be the response. After that three-month offer has become norm but for 1 year no one has seen the response," Micromax Informatics co-founder, Rahul Sharma said.

The company started shipping Canvas 2 from today for sale on retail stores.

"By the end of next week, it will be available across 40 -60 per cent of our market in the country. This is first phone in India with Corning Gorilla Glass 5. We will be disappointed if at least 1 million Canvas 2 are not shipped till Diwali season," Sen said.

Micromax Canvas 2 will be sold only through offline retail channel.

The phone will run on Android Nougat. It comes with MediaTek quad core chipset, 3,050 mAh battery promising talk time of up to 11 hours, 3GB RAM, 16 GB internal storage and 64 GB expandable memory.

"We will sell this phone offline only because offline buyers are looking for something more. With this phone, we are offering them 1 Year of screen replacement and 30 day smartphone replacement," Sen said.

Micromax has plans to launch around 15 smartphones within one year with focus on consumers buying smartphones in the range of Rs 10,000-15,000, Sharma said.