Telecom company Airtel and Google have partnered to launch low-cost smartphones powered by Android Oreo Go edition in India. First such phones will be available by March 2018 making India the first market to have the Go edition phones. Lava and Micromax will manufacture these phones. Android Oreo Go edition is a configuration of the Android operating system specifically optimised for devices with 1GB of RAM or less. The phones will have a new range of apps which run on lesser data. They will also come with twice as much storage out of the box, Airtel says. This partnership is a part of Airtel’s “Mera Pehla Smartphone” initiative, which began in October 2017 to build an “open ecosystem” of affordable 4G smartphones. In November last year, Airtel partnered with Karbonn Mobiles to bring such phones powered by Android 7.0 Nougat OS starting from an effective price of Rs 1799. Then in January 2018, the telecom operator also announced a deal with Samsung for its Galaxy J-series phones. Jio effect? Airtel's new initiative and the partnerships within it, are in direct competition with Jio, and offer smartphone instead of Jio's feature phone, at a slightly higher price.In early 2017, Reliance Jio launched 4G enabled feature phones, available from a price of Rs 1,500. The users can choose from 22 languages, and the phone comes with in-built voice assistance and a recently added Facebook app. Report by Counterpoint Research suggests that the Jio Phone was the top feature phone brand in the quarter that…
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