Worldwide sales of mobile phones to end users declined 3.1 % in the third quarter at 428 million units. Smartphone sales accounted for 39.6 percent of total mobile phone sales.

The Empowered Group of Ministers (EGoM) headed by Finance Minister P Chidambaram has allowed some incumbent GSM operators (Airtel, Vodafone India and Idea Cellular) to retain some spectrum in the 900 megahertz (MHz) frequency band, however rest of the bandwidth will be re-auctioned.

The court was of the view that as government has already set up a committee on radiation issue, it needs a free hand at the initial stages.

Mobile based banking seems to be on rise in India and it can be gauged from data provided by the central bank on mobile banking. According to RBI’s data, volume of mobile based transactions has gone up over 40 % in August this year when compared to the month of February.

In the first six months of this year, a total of 102.43 million handsets were shipped to India with Nokia still leading pack. During the same period, India smartphone shipment reached 5.5 million units, according to Cyber Media Research’s Mobile Handsets Market Review’s September 2012 release.

Using Airtel 4G, now people from Pune can access around 76 channels and on-demand videos across various genres including movies, music, entertainment and news. Pricing for such pack is Rs. 150 and Rs 49 for monthly and weekly subscribers, respectively.

The phone has a Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 dual core processor at 1.5 Ghz, Android Ice Cream Sandwich operating system, 1 GB RAM, 4 GB ROM, 4.3 in super amoled HD display, an 8 megapixel camera and Gorilla Glass.

Mobile sales in India to reach 251 million units in 2013, says Gartner. Also, read about the Micromax phenomena and how PC makers Lenovo and HP are jockeying for No 1 position.