Image Credits: Canva
Image Credits: Quartz
Billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s blueprint to surmount the Indian market with a locally assembled Google-powered smartphone is suffering a backfall, due to the disruptions in the supply chain and rising component prices which are stifling production volumes. The co-branded phone is dated to launch on June 24 at a company shareholder meeting, which will be followed by an official debut in the months of August or September.
The original plan of Ambani’s Reliance Industries Ltd. was to make sales in the hundreds of millions in the preliminary years for the inexpensive device. This plan was then squashed as now they are looking forward to a small fraction of that at launch. Even the slightest delay in the launch would be a significant setback for Reliance and its manufacturing partners in India.
Ambani aims to transform the world’s fastest-growing smartphone market in the same way he did for wireless services, but with competitive pricing.
The engineers of Reliance and Google have consolidated manpower to make a device for the technology-hungry but a price-sensitive country with an abundance of internet users who are expected to be over 900 million by 2025. They have devised a hardware design and a version of the Android operating system. This technology can deliver a high-end experience without expensive materials.
Ambani has allured more than $20 billion in investments from U.S. tech giants like Facebook Inc., Google, and Qualcomm Inc. to reinforce his presence in the technology sector. In addition to the new smartphone, he is anticipated to make an announcement this month regarding the collaborations with Qualcomm and Facebook’s WhatsApp on 5G and e-commerce.