India is not smartphone friendly: Google India MD

By siliconindia   |   Friday, 08 January 2010, 23:07 IST   |    8 Comments
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India is not smartphone friendly: Google India MD
Bangalore: Even though India has emerged as the largest growth market for Google; Shailesh Rao believes that India does not have a proper policy, latest network, suitable condition or perfect mindset for high-end phones like Google Nexus. Speaking at 2nd International Conference on Communication Systems and Networks (COMSNETS) Workshops, Rao, who is Managing Director of Google India said, "India needs to have proper policy to have high end phones. It's not the issue that we discuss regularly, and it would be very early to say the time frame to launch Nexus in India." Stressing on the Indian policies, demand of Android enabled phones and condition, the Canada-born Rao, with roots in Karnataka, who took over as Google's India head in April 2007, said, "In India Internet has been seen as the purview of integral segment of people, even though it has not been verbal service. Education, software and national security firms have built a platform, which have been the real enablers. So if that mindset can be changed and people in public sector are educated, India can go much ahead." In India online sector is still 'under invested' and not enough applications, content and products are coming online. Rao said, "If we see the user statistics in India, proportionately, internet penetration in India is still slow, though PC penetration is increasing in small and medium enterprises." Still, the people in the country search for different kinds of high-end phones only on weekends. Even though situation is not perfect for introduction of smartphones in India, Rao believes that mobile search space, especially with the introduction of 3G and fall in the prices of smartphones and data plans, will be the revenue generator of the company in 2010. Google has also plans to create its own Wave App Store, making it possible for developers to earn money for their efforts developing for the platform. Till now, the most successful app store is the iPhone's, which has blown past the 100,000 approved iPhone app mark.