realme plans to expand to Europe by this summer, keep current pricing

After splitting off from Oppo, the realme brand of smartphones is currently doing very well in the India market. Now, it looks like the company is ready to expand to a new market: Europe.

This news comes straight from Realme CEO Madhav Sheth, who recently sat down for an interview with GSM Arena. During that chat, Sheth confirmed that realme plans to launch in Europe by July of this year via an online-only business model (i.e., no carrier partnerships). This means Europeans will be able to visit realme’s site and buy phones directly from the company to ship to their home addresses.

Additionally, you will be able to buy more than just smartphones as the company also plans to offer a brand new line of accessories. However, Sheth didn’t give any specifics on what to expect on that front. We reached out to the company for extra clarification and will update this article should we receive a response.

The full interview is worth a read, but here are some tidbits of info Sheth revealed:

• The company plans to stick with marketing phones in the $100 to $300 range. However, it eventually will expand to more pricing levels.
• There will be 5G realme phones but not until the Indian networks are ready, so likely not until 2020 at the earliest.
• There are no plans for a realme foldable phone as the market hasn’t been established yet.
• All realme devices will get two years of security patches and Android updates. All phones from the company will have Android 9 Pie by the end of June.
• The realme 3 Pro will be the first device from the company to have access to the beta of Android Q.
• According to Sheth, 30 percent of realme users are migrating from Samsung devices, while 40 percent are migrating from Xiaomi.
• There are no plans to offer a stock Android experience on realme phones with ColorOS being the focus instead.

Are you a European who would buy a realme device if given the opportunity? What do you think about this company’s devices? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

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