The company aims to price the phones between $75 to $100 and hopes that a bloatware-free experience will make the phones stand out in the already crowded segment
Cyanogen Inc. may launch budget phones next year. The company has partnered with manufacturers in a number of regions for the production of the smartphones. The targeted price of the phones is in the $75 to $100 range, which is roughly between Rs. 5,000 and Rs. 6,600. While the entry-level phone market is already quite crowded, the company hopes that a bloatware-free experience and an up-to-date OS will make the phones stand out.
Cyanogen also said that the upcoming phones will use Cyanogen OS 13, which will be based on Android 6.0. The company will provide its partners with SDKs for custom apps which will differ by manufacturer and region to ensure that apps don’t overlap. Cyanogen’s Steve Klondik also mentioned that the company may also release a flagship device in the future.
Google’s Android One initiative was announced last year and offered Android users a bloatware-free experience with timely updates. The company had also announced that it was partnering with Micromax, Karbonn, and Spice for manufacturing Android One devices. However, the phones weren’t as successful as Google would have liked. An Economic Times report said that the three companies together managed to sell just over 2 lakh device in the month of October last year. This was less than the 2.3 lakh handsets imported in the first 15 days of September. They also launched a more powerful variant of Android One in partnership with Lava called the Pixel V1 in July this year. The phone was not only more powerful than its Android One predecessors, but was also more expensive.
Rajan Anandan, managing director in India and Southeast Asia, Google told Financial Times that the company is working with manufacturers on a phone with a cheaper set of specification at a very low price bracket. As per the report, Google will re-launch Android One initiative and will try to offer phones under Rs. 3,000. Anandan said that the company is aiming to bring “high quality” to low-priced devices. According to him, Google believes that the next 10 years, most of India’s population will go online and the company wants to be the go-to service for those people.
Source: Android Authority
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