PC News - Pepsi is releasing a line of smartphones in China

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10-12-2015 04:52 PM


When you think of Pepsi, you probably think of sugary carbonated beverages. Maybe soon you’ll think “smartphones” when someone asks if Pepsi is okay instead of Coke (it’s not, though a certain editor of mine disagrees). The company has confirmed that it’s helping to launch a Pepsi-branded Android phone called the P1 in China later this year. The world can be pretty weird.
The phone will apparently feature midrange specs including a 5.5-inch 1080p LCD, 2GB of RAM, 16GB of storage, a 3000mAh battery, a 13MP camera, and a 1.7GHz processor. The SoC is allegedly going to be the MediaTek MT6592 octa-core ARM chip. This inexpensive SoC is popular in mid-range Chinese Android devices. It’s not the fastest ARM chip out there (based on the Cortex-A53 CPU core), but the number of cores is very important when marketing phones in China.
The Pepsi P1 will be running Android 5.1, but as it will be a Chinese phone, there won’t be any Google services like Gmail, Maps, or the Play Store. Those will have to be replaced with local equivalents. The P1 will also have a Pepsi app, which it probably plans to use for*marketing to the hip young crown that would buy a cola phone. So the phone will have Pepsi branding crawling all over, but the price will be good for the specs at 1,299 yuan. That works out to $205. If the device sells well, there could be a line of Pepsi-branded phones in China. It’ll have stiff competition from established brands like Huaewi and Xiaomi that already offer very inexpensive phones.
Pepsi has confirmed the phone exists, but it’s not building it on its own. One of the many white label electronics manufacturers in China will be doing all the leg work, then adding the Pepsi-licensed branding to the device. Frankly, I think they’re missing an opportunity to make the phone out of recycled Pepsi cans. Now that would be a marketing opportunity. The official announcement is rumored to take place on October 20.
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