Reliance’s Jio platforms have been on a wave of funding in recent months with considerable investment coming from Facebook, Qualcomm and other global names. Joining this extensive list is Google, which will choose a minority stake in India’s largest telecommunications company to create custom software and hardware solutions for India’s growing appetite for smartphones, particularly in the low-end segment.
At today’s investor meeting, Reliance announced that Google and Jio are partnering to make entry-level 4G smartphones after the latter’s 4G-powered phone has had massive success in the region. So far, a large part of India’s population of more than a billion people has joined 2G-enabled phones, and a cheap Android phone will likely be their first choice when they decide to retire. There are hundreds of millions of potential customers that Google and Jio want to be ready to absorb. In the future, when 5G becomes a real The duo can even date a 5G-enabled entry-level phone.
Everyone should have internet access. Proud to partner with @reliancejio to increase access for the hundreds of millions in India who don’t own a smartphone with our first $ 4.5B investment from the #GoogleForIndia Digitization Fund.https: //t.co/1fP8iBZQfm
– Sundar Pichai (@sundarpichai) July 15, 2020
Jio also plans to accept Google’s assistance in creating a custom Android-based operating system that presumably doesn’t require as many resources as the standard version of Android. Although Google already has the Android Go Edition program to meet similar needs, for whatever reason, that doesn’t seem to be right for Jio. Company officials declined to share more details about this new operating system or any of the phones that may be in the works.
Of the $ 10 billion fund Google announced for the Indian market last week, $ 4.5 billion will be invested in Jio Platforms owned by 7.7 percent. In the past few months alone, Reliance’s subsidiary has raised more than $ 20 billion, though most of it is still pending regulatory approval, including Google’s involvement.
Also, Jio had some big announcements to make, such as preparing for 5G deployment using locally developed solutions. He even unveiled his AR-enabled Jio Glass (pictured above), which could be used for mixed reality apps and would be available sometime next year. Lastly, the JioTV + app for the company’s media box has received a makeover to allow cross-app search and single sign-on for most streaming apps, including big names like Netflix, Prime Video , YouTube and Disney + Hotstar. It has also added interactive features like content-related polls on live television.
