Reliance Industries Ltd chairman Mukesh Ambani on Thursday announced that Google and Jio partnered to develop a smartphone especially for the Indian market, JioPhone Next. Addressing the shareholders at Reliance Industries’ 44th AGM, Ambani said that the JioPhone Next smartphone is powered by an extremely optimised version of the Android operating system. The smartphone will be available from September 10, 2020, the “auspicious date of Ganesha Chaturthi” this year, he added.
Announcing the product, Ambani said that JioPhone Next is ultra-affordable and packed with cutting-edge features like voice assistant, automatic read-aloud of screen text, language translation, and smart camera with augmented reality filter.
“This is a testimony of a global technology giant and national technology champion working together to make truly a breakthrough product that can be first introduced in India and then taken to the rest of the world,” said Ambani while talking about the partnership with Google.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai said that at a time when so many aspects of people’s lives are moving online, it is more important to make technology accessible and helpful for everyone, adding that such a goal is at the heart of our partnership with Reliance Jio. In a video address at the Reliance AGM, Pichai said that Google’s vision was to bring affordable access to information for Indians in their own language and to build new products and services for India’s unique needs.
Mukesh Ambani said, “Next steps in this vision start with a new, affordable, Jio smartphone, created with Google. It is built for India and it will open up new possibilities for millions of new users who will experience the internet for the first time.”
Ambani also highlighted the growth of Reliance Jio in the data carrier market, saying it has become the first operator outside China to cross 400 million subscribers in a single country. He noted that Reliance Jio is world’s second largest data carrier, handling 630 crore gigabytes of data traffic every month.
