Google has already captured the smartphone market with world’s popular OS the Android OS has already entered the lower/budget smartphone with its cut-down version of Android with Android Go OS which is not doing a great business till date, now Google wants to try its hands on the feature phone market as it has now invested whopping $22 million on KaiOS.
As per KaiOS, Google has invested $22 million with a target to bring the next-gen mobile phone users to the online world. “This funding will help us fast-track development and global deployment of KaiOS-enabled smart feature phones, allowing us to connect the vast population that still cannot access the internet, especially in emerging markets,” said Sebastien Codeville, CEO of KaiOS Technologies.
Earlier we saw the Reliance Jio cheapest 4G feature phone the JioPhone running on KaiOS which helped the Honk Kong-based firm to gain immense popularity and more users to its KaiOS. We also saw Google launching the dedicated Google Assistant app made for JioPhone which was the major hint that Google might partner with KaiOS for future development of feature phone market and bring all the Google services on KaiOS.
Google and KaiOS will work together to bring the YouTube, Google Assistant, Google Maps and Google search which will be based on HTML5, JavaScript, and CSS. “We want to ensure that Google apps and services are available to everyone, whether they are using desktops, smartphones, or feature phones,” said Anjali Joshi, Vice-President, Product Management, Next Billion Users
