New Delhi: Jio Platforms and Google have entered into a commercial agreement to jointly develop the entry-level affordable smartphone with optimizations to the Android operating system and the Play Store.
"I am excited that our joint collaboration will focus on increasing access for hundreds of millions of Indians who don't currently own a smartphone while improving the mobile experience for all," said Alphabet and Google CEO Sundar Pichai.
Reliance Jio launched a feature phone called JioPhone in 2017 that currently has an installed base of 20 percent among the country's feature phone users.
Tarun Pathak, Associate Director, Counterpoint Research, told that Jio has the potential to undercut its rivals in pricing as we have seen before.
"Google's partnership will give it more flexibility to offer stable hardware and software experience. Individually, both Jio with initial 4G smartphone launches and Google with Android One programme did their best in the past to capture entry-level smartphone user base but didn't succeed," Pathak explained.
"However, we see this happening once 5G networks are live," said Pathak.
Google said it wants to work with Jio and other leaders in the local ecosystem to ensure that smartphones together with the apps and services in the Play Store - are within reach for many more Indians across the country.
"We believe the pace of Indian innovation means that the experiences we create for India can ultimately be expanded to the rest of the world," said Sanjay Gupta, Country Head, and VP, Google India.
Google opened its first Indian campuses in Bengaluru and Hyderabad in 2004.
"Since then, we've made India central to our Next Billion Users initiative-designed to ensure the internet is useful for people coming online for the first time. We've improved our apps and services so they're relevant in more Indian languages and created offline versions for those facing network constraints," added Sameer Samat, VP, Product Management at Google.
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(Inputs from IANS)
