Google unveils USD105 Android One smartphone amid push in India

Google Inc. will offer customers in India the Android One, a low-cost phone capable of Internet access, to win users in the fastest growing smartphone market.
The smartphone featuring a MediaTek Inc. quad-core processor and a 4.5-inch screen will start at 6,399 rupees (USD105), Vice President Caesar Sengupta said at a press conference in New Delhi yesterday. The handsets made by Micromax Informatics Ltd., Karbonn Mobiles India Pvt. and Spice Mobility Ltd. will be available online on Amazon.com Inc.’s India website and at Flipkart Online Services Pvt. and Snapdeal.com.
The low-cost phone could help Google’s Android software add first-time Internet users in India, where most people get online using smartphones rather than computers. Competitor Mozilla Corp. introduced a $33-smartphone running its Firefox operating system in the world’s second-most populous nation last month.
“We expect India to be the second largest Internet market by 2017,” Sundar Pichai, senior vice president at the Mountain View, California-based company, said in New Delhi yesterday. “And it’s happening due to mobile.”
About 76 percent of 243 million Web users in India access the Internet on smartphones, according to a July report by We Are Social, a social media marketing company based in London. The South Asian nation had 797 million active wireless subscribers as of July, according to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India.
“Android One should be playing in the volume sweet spot of the India smartphone market,” Mohammad Chowdhury, Leader Telecom at PwC India, said in an e-mail. “This market will generate 80 million plus shipments this year and so there is a lot to play for.”
Google plans to offer the Android One platform to Asian markets including Indonesia, Philippines, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Sri Lanka by the end of this year, it said in the statement. The developer of mobile software will partner with companies including Panasonic Corp., Acer Inc., Lenovo Group Ltd., HTC Corp. and Qualcomm Inc. on the devices.
“India is just a start for us,” Pichai said. “We’ll learn here and use this as template for other countries.” Bianca Vázquez Toness, Bloomberg