HTC is betting big on emerging markets like India for its first non-smartphone device - the Smart. Based on Qualcomm's BREW platform, HTC hopes to bridge the gap between smartphones and touch-enabled feature phones by usinga version of its Sense UI on the Smart, the same UI that it uses on Android and WinMo devices.

"For India, we are focusing on products in the range of Rs 10,000-15,000. We spent a lot of time to create the HTC Sense like UI on the HTC Smart. It will act as a smartphone but (will be) easy to use. Peter (Chou, HTC’s CEO) personally championed this product," said Jack Tong, vice president for APAC, HTC during an interaction at MWC in Barcelona last month. He added, "This is a new line of product and brings new opportunities for HTC in a huge market like India. We are investing $1 million upfront for the launch of Smart in India."

With the Smart, HTC will now compete with the likes of Samsung's Corby series as well as LG's new Cookie lineup. This will be a completely new ball game for HTC, which has never sold a sub-Rs 10,000 device and usually competes in the high-end smartphone space. Probably, this is where the $1 million marketing budget will come in handy. The HTC Smart launch is expected in the last week of March in India.

At a time when most handset vendors are dabbling in phones with solar panels to cater to rural markets that suffer from prolonged electricity outages, Olive Mobile - an Indian handset vendor with ties to Haier - has gone back to the basics and introduced a cellphone that can work on a AAA battery when the primary battery runs out of juice!

Olive's FrvrOn is priced at Rs 1,699 and has a 1.5 inch display, FM radio with loudspeaker and comes with a stereo headset. Olive has not clarified about the talktime that a user would get with a AAA battery but we'd be happy if it can do an hour of calls and about a day of standby time.

The company has promised us a review unit and this is probably the first low-end phone in a long time that we are really looking forward to review!

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This year's MWC was a bit different from others - Apple's CEO, Steve Jobs, was finally recognised by the telecom industry and Google's CEO, Eric Schmidt, made the keynote address. Neither Apple nor Google are what we call traditional telecoms players, yet, they have had a bigger impact in the telecom industry in the past couple of years than anyone else. I consider myself priviliged to be able to hear Mr Schmidt talking about how Google is making 'Mobile First' and his vision of how crucial connected cellphones will be in the coming years. For those of our readers who couldn't make it to MWC, here's the complete video of Eric Schmidt's keynote address including the whacky intro courtesy of the Official Google Mobile Blog. Grab a bucket of popcorns, a bottle of soda (or any poison of your liking) and hit play.

The patent wars continue. After Nokia and Apple suing and counter-suing each other, it is now HTC's turn to face the heat with Apple suing the Taiwan-based smartphone manufacturer for infringing 20 patents "related to the iPhone’s user interface, underlying architecture and hardware. The lawsuit was filed concurrently with the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) and in U.S. District Court in Delaware."

“We can sit by and watch competitors steal our patented inventions, or we can do something about it. We’ve decided to do something about it. We think competition is healthy, but competitors should create their own original technology, not steal ours," said Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO in a press release.

The press release goes on... Apple reinvented the mobile phone in 2007 with its revolutionary iPhone®, and did it again in 2008 with its pioneering App Store, which now offers more than 150,000 mobile applications in over 90 countries. Over 40 million iPhones have been sold worldwide.

TechCrunch got hold of the actual complaint and claims that the complaint is more about Android than HTC. It's surprising that Apple did not name Google as one of the defendants. Well, could it be because of the 'good relations' that Google maintains it has with Apple? Who knows...

For a change, Samsung had just one major announcement at MWC - the Wave, Sammy's first phone running on the Bada platform. While the specs sound awesome - a 1 GHz processor and 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi support - our first impression of Bada was that it was inspired by the iPhone and Android operating systems. It is smooth and no doubt seems very user friendly, it lacks the 'wow' factor that we'd expect from a new platform. In my opinion, Samsung's Bada is aimed at Nokia and its ailing Symbian platform than really taking on the likes of Apple and Google.

It is a good strategy from Samsung, as it will continue to have Android smartphones in its portfolio and Bada would essentially counter Nokia's S60 devices. What remains to be seen is how big a hole would the Wave burn in our pockets. The sweet spot, in our opinion, would be somewhere close to Rs 20,000.

Check out the hands on video below and let us know what you think.