The CEO of Google, Sundar Pichai, visited India yesterday. He has talked about many tech-related projects in India, but mainly about Project Loon and bringing free Wi-Fi to many train stations in that Asian country, a project which will commence next month. If you’d like to know more about that, click here. That being said, additional info surfaced, and this time around we have some Android One-related news, read on.
A new report released by The Economic Times, shares more information regarding Android One project, it seems like Sundar Pichai talked about the project while he was in India after all. The company’s CEO has backed the Android One project, and he actually said it was a success in all the 20 countries it was released in, which is interesting considering the sales numbers haven’t exactly been the best. Only 1.2 million Android One devices were shipped in the country during the first year of sales (September 2014 – September 2015), and only 3 million devices were shipped in 19 countries. “We launched it in India, and we are now available in 20 countries. Just like the Nexus programme in the US and the developed world, we use Android One help guide the ecosystem and get them to make higher quality more affordable smartphones,” said Mr. Pichai.
Google’s VP (Product Management), Caesar Sengupta, has added that Google has made significant improvements as far as Android One is concerned, and that the latest Marshmallow update will make the user experience even better before, while it will also add a number of local languages to the mix. Now, the company’s CEO has released a rather interesting piece of info during his visit to India, he has said that the company plans to bring a high-end, and yet affordable Android One handset to India soon. Unfortunately, he did not elaborate on that, so we don’t now when exactly will it happen, nor who will manufacture that smartphone. Luckily for us, the senior VP and Head of Products at Lava, one of Google’s Android One partners, basically confirmed they will manufacture that handset. Mr. Navin Chawla said that the company plans to launch a new high-end Android One device assembled in India in the first quarter of the next financial year (starting April 1st).