Google is aggressively working in the Indian market to get the next billion population up on the internet. The most recent venture in this regard is its partnership with several smartphone makers in India to launch low-cost smartphones running Android Oreo Go — a light-weight version of Android Oreo for low spec’d smartphones.
The phones will cost almost Rs. 2,000 a piece. On average, a 4G-enabled smartphone in India costs around Rs. 6,400. This is a massive slash in prices which wouldn’t have been possible without the collaboration with Google.
Google’s Android Oreo Go is an operating system that unlike its father ‘Android Oreo’ doesn’t require a heavy hardware, RAM and storage to run.
Through these 4G-enabled low-cost smartphones, Indian smartphone vendors are helping people get access to fast internet easily. According to FactorDaily,
“From a monthly consumption of 20 crore GB of data about 16 months ago, Indians now consume over 150 crore GB a month making the country No. 1 among mobile data consuming countries.”
In addition to Android Oreo Go, Google is expected to launch the basic version of its other important applications as well so that they can be used in low-cost smartphones. Google’s official has said that the company is closely working with developers community to get their applications optimized for Go version.
In the past few months, Google has launched several applications for emerging markets; datally is one of those applications which allows users to keep a track on their data usage.
Google is extensively working in India to get their lower-affordability segment on Android. Google’s annual revenue in India is more than one billion dollars. In addition to India, Pakistan is also an important market for Google as it has yet to embrace smartphones.
