Romanian company makes dual-sim phones in Brasov

A Brasov-based company, which was established in 2002, and sold TVs and DVDs under the Allview brand, has become one of the top-selling mobile phone brands in Romania in less than two years by tapping into a niche that speculates characteristics of Romanian telecom consumers: telephones that work with two sim cards at the same time, even cards from different operators. Last year the company posted a 2.4 million-euro turnover. "We decided to go for the phone market after we looked at the penetration degree of telephones among the population and the number of telecom subscribers," Lucian Peticila, general manager of Visual Fan, told ZF. In Romania, a mobile telephony market with six operators and over 25 million active cards, around 26% of the urban population has two phones, usually affiliated to two different networks, according to market information. By tapping into this segment, the Brasov makers of Allview mobile phones have sold over 20,000 units in a year and a half, both through GSM retail networks, such as Germanos, and through their own online store. The telephones are manufactured in Asia, with the software later adapted by the Brasov-based company, which sells them under its own brand. Over 4.5 million mobile phones are sold in Romania per year.