Two years ago, the Alcatel brand was the number three smartphone brand in Australia, cheap, and packed with the technology that the value customer wanted, today Alcatel smartphones have all but disappeared from Australian carriers and retailers with Big W left selling select models.

An experiment by Chinese Company TCL, who hated the idea of paying a licence fee to Alcatel to manufacture phones branded in their name and not TCL appears to have gone horribly wrong.

The attempt to replace Alcatel branded devices with TCL branded devices has not worked for the simple reason that the TCL brand is “still not known” according to sources.

Former employees of TCL claim that Alcatel was seen as a trusted brand, “Millions had been spent marketing and building the Alcatel brand with high profile sponsorship deals, which have now been cancelled with the NSW based NRL team South Sydney (The Rabbitohs)” as a result the sales followed, and the business was profitable and growing”.

ChannelNews understands that in early 2020 more than 600,000 units of Alcatel branded smartphones were being sold in Australia.

Back in 2020 Alcatel and TCL branded smartphones were sold into the market via a distribution relationship, with mobile phone and telecommunications industry executive Sam Skontos heading the business.

Skontos and his team he had was highly successful growing the Alcatel brand while launching several TCL branded devices.

Then in 2021 TCL took control of their own operation in Australia with former Huawei executives hired to run the business.

Since then, the Alcatel brand has disappeared with neither JB Hi Fi, Telstra, or Optus who account for over 80% of smartphones sales in Australia ranging TCL branded smartphones in Australia.

Today TCL is punting on Harvey Norman and TPG Vodafone to deliver growth in Australia.

TCL has not provided any sales numbers or explained how they intend to replace the volume they lost with the disappearance of the Alcatel brand in Australia.

This week in Asia TCL officially launched a new version of their Alcatel 1V it has a bigger display, a triple camera array, and a significantly better battery than past models.

Available in two colours – Space Grey and Atlantic Blue TCL has also introduced a new design that features on the front a larger 6.52-inch water-drop notch display with HD+ resolution.

It has a 20:9 aspect ratio and a standard 60Hz refresh rate.

The screen comes with Eye care modes like Eye-comfort and Reading mode. The Eye-comfort mode reduces the harmful blue light emitted by the display.

It has a 13MP primary lens with Phase Detection Auto Focus, a 2MP depth sensor, and lastly a 2MP macro lens. This is an upgrade over the dual-camera system on the predecessor. At the rear, it has a 5MP HDR sensor.

It is powered by the MediaTek Helio A22 chipset paired with 2GB of RAM and 64GB of internal storage. It houses a 5,000mAh battery and is selling for under $150.