Over the past few years, the budget segment has emerged as one of the most important sections of the smartphone market. In countries such as ours, we've seen relatively new smartphone makers win over budget buyers with offerings that bring with them impressive specs at even more impressive price points.

The influx of these affordable devices has contributed to India overtaking the United States to become the second-largest smartphone market in the world. However, despite such staggering growth, there is a large section of the society which remains untouched by the smartphone revolution taking place in the country.

Over 50 crore Indians are still to take the plunge and ditch their feature phones for a smart one. A very big reason for this remains the lack of ultra-affordable handsets that fall below the Rs 3,000-mark but at the same time also bring with them the goodness of Google's Android operating system.

Bottleneck

It is not as if smartphone makers have not tried to fix the situation by bringing Android devices at ultra-affordable price points. However, because of their low specs, these phones have failed to provide the acceptable user experience. Android, as an operating system, and its apps require a decent amount of RAM and processing power to function smoothly.

However, to pack close to 1GB-2GB of RAM and a powerful enough processor without breaking the Rs 3,000 barrier is no easy task and as such this till date remains a conundrum that smartphone makers haven't been able to find the solution to.

Enter Android Go

At Google I/O 2017 - the company's annual developers conference - it announced that almost a decade after the birth of Android OS, Google will bring Android Go - the company's software solution to the problems faced by the fast-growing entry-level phone segment.

Speaking at the conference, CEO Sundar Pichai explained how the engineers at Google made optimisations to the system UI and kernel of the mobile OS, to create an all-new budget phone friendly platform, Android Go.

First of the devices to run Android Oreo (Go edition) are now set to be announced at Mobile World Congress 2018, where Google has said manufacturers will showcase smartphones that cost as low as $50 (Approx Rs 3,000), and sport as little as 512MB of RAM.

Not compromising on user experience

However, Google has promised that this low price point or hardware for that matter would not reflect in below par performance on these phones. Apart from optimisations to the OS, Android Go also comes decked with a new version of Play Store that brings new apps designed to run smoothly on entry-level phones.

Google has already created a whole suite of apps like YouTube Go, Maps Go and a new version of Chrome that is not only fast, and reliable but also easy on mobile data - an optimisation that will be of particular interest to users in rural areas of the country where high-speed mobile data penetration still remains low.

Aimed at Indian Users

With many users in the country using feature phones, and millions of new users looking to buy ultra-affordable phones that offer decent performance, Android Oreo (Go edition) will help bring a streamlined Android experience to users at a price point that could truly rival feature and smart-feature phones that have started to grow in popularity in the country.

It's still early days and probably premature to talk about how popular the OS will become in the country, but after the launch of the first wave of true Android Go phones, expect smartphone makers to reach the entry-level segment in a new way and significantly change the landscape of the smartphone market in India.

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