Google plans to reboot its Android One project in India. The Android-maker, which debuted the initiative in the country last September with sub-Rs. 6,500 handsets, will soon resurface with a sub-Rs. 3,000 Android handset as part of Google's 'massive' investment push in the country. (Update: After originally stating that Google is getting ready to launch a sub-Rs. 3,000 smartphone, FT.com has updated its original report to say that Google wants to achieve this price point "over the next few years".)
“It is like any company when you try to launch a new initiative — we had a few hiccups,” Rajan said of Android One's perceived failure and added that the "sweet spot" for mass-adoption of smartphones in India is between Rs. 2,000 and Rs. 3,000. In comparison, last year's Android One phones cost upwards of Rs. 6,000.
Google hasn't announced who will partner for this project, but the handset compete with the offerings from Lava, Micromax, Intex and several other big ticket manufacturers in the Indian smartphone scene. Speaking during an interview with the Financial Times, Google's MD in Southeast Asia, Rajan Anandan has said that the pricing sweet spot is somewhere between $31 (Rs 1,900) and $47 (Rs 3,000).
The smartphones had the same hardware and camera specs the major difference was the brand. The Android One smartphones did moderately well as they faced tough competition from the Motorola Moto Moto E and the Xiaomi Redmi 1s smartphone.
Worth noting is that we have seen a partial revival of the Android One program with the launch of the Lava Pixel V1, a decidedly higher end Android One device. This in tandem with more bandwidth optimized services like YouTube and Google Maps could be catalyst needed by Android’s already substantial foothold over the market.
“There are several battlegrounds where we are not winning [and] local search is clearly the one where it’s most apparent,” Rajan Anandan said to the Financial Times, noting competition from a Mumbai-listed Indian search start-up called JustDial. “Strategically it [India] is very, very important. Don’t get me wrong, the revenue is interesting but… we’re here really because 10 years from now a billion Indians will be online and when we have a billion Indians online we think that’s going to make a huge difference to the global internet economy.”
Where Android One’s first stint in India was concerned, according to Counterpoint Research the cumulative shipments of these smartphones were to hit 1 million by the end of December 2014. Zero rating data usage means that certain apps will not be charged any data rates in your monthly bill cycle and it will not consume any data from data-plans which you may have purchased.
That's certainly an understandable long-term goal. The question will be whether Google can make Android One worth it for Indian consumers here and now... not to mention Indian and Chinese phone manufacturers who are already working with extremely thin profit margins in an incredibly competitive market. Presumably Android One's second-gen standardized hardware designs would expand to other markets soon after an Indian launch. Financial Times quotes Anandan, who said that the rebooted Android One program would be announced "in the next few weeks."