Strengthening Google India’s commitment to connect the next billion Indians by focusing on entry-level smartphones, the company announced several India-first products and features, some of which will be rolled out in other countries soon.
“On average, a connected mobile Internet user in India today is consuming over 4GB of data per month. At the current growth rate and given the connectivity environment, we expect this number to reach 11GB per user per month in the next four years and Google is here to help connect all,” Rajan Anandan, Vice President, South East Asia and India at Google, said at the company’s third annual “Google for India” event here.
Currently, there are nearly 400 million Internet users in India, along with over 300 million smartphone users and about 650 million mobile phone users.
“There are 230 million Indian language users online on Google today and 170 million of them are using our messaging service. Yet, we have over 900 million Indians who aren’t connected to Internet. Our mission is connectivity for every Indian. We’ll stay focused until every single Indian is connected,” Anandan said.
Android Oreo Launch
At the event, Google announced Android Oreo (Go edition) that will be available for entry-level smartphones, for which India is a huge market.
“Oreo devices with 512MB to 1GB of RAM will get all the optimisations that come with Android Oreo (Go edition), including a better performing OS with built-in data management features and security benefits,” said Caesar Sengupta, Vice President, Next Billion Users Team at Google.
“Our partners’ phones running Android Oreo (Go edition) will hit shelves in early 2018,” he added.
To help bikers find the most suitable route in India, Google has incorporated navigation routes for two-wheelers with Voice Assistant capabilities in its Maps feature.
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