On November 4, jiuphone next will be officially launched in India, which is the seventh year Pichai wants to sell "Google mobile phone" to India. In 2019, when India has become the second largest smartphone market in the world, the penetration rate is still less than 30%, which is still a true portrayal of India's smartphone market. Therefore, jiophones without large screen, 5g and high-performance processor have become "Zhenxiang" mobile phones in India. As the current CEO of Google, Sundar Pichai, who was born in India, knows what is needed there and once launched a number of smartphones of about $100 by virtue of Android ecology. Unfortunately, Indians prefer Chinese mobile phones. In the past few years, Xiaomi ov from China has quickly won more than half of the market share of Indian smartphone market. This makes Pichai very depressed. In 2020, Google injected $4.5 billion into jio platforms under Mukesh Ambani, India's richest man, and jiophone became Google's bottom card in impacting the Indian mobile phone market. 01 Jio is a good "target" In 2010, an Internet company named infotel Broadband Services Limited (ibsl) spent US $2.7 billion to capture the full band access rights of 22 Indian states (equivalent to China's provinces), which means that ibsl can carry out telecom business smoothly next. The company was subsequently bought 95% of the shares by Reliance Industries (RIL) of Mukesh Ambani for us $1.07 billion, and changed its name to jio platforms in 2013, becoming a wholly-owned subsidiary of Reliance Industries. So far, jio platforms has completed the first counter attack in his life and is ready to do a big job. In the following three years, jio platforms spent billions of dollars to build 100000 4G base stations across India, covering 18000 cities and 200000 villages, ensuring that more than 80% of India can use the 4G network of jio platforms. On September 5, 2016, jio platforms launched 4G network services and provided free 4G network services and "free" jiophones to all Indians for half a year. Such a pricing strategy stirred the entire Indian Internet market at that time. Then, Google began to install free Wi Fi in Indian railway stations, Facebook began to implement free services, and other telecom operators also reduced prices to deal with the price war provoked by Ambani. Price war has always been the best commercial means to quickly seize the market. According to data, Ambani has invested a total of US $33 billion in 4G network construction, and the return is: 100 million users were quickly obtained in only 70 days; In 2019, jio platforms counterattacked and became the largest local operator in India, with 388 million users. Also in 2019, India surpassed the United States to become the world's second largest smartphone market. At this time, when the world focused on India, the business of jio platforms has penetrated into social networking, e-commerce, payment and other fields. Ibsl, once unknown, has turned into the most powerful technology company in India. In 2020, jio platforms began to sell shares for financing. Once the news was announced, it quickly attracted global technology giants and capital leaders including Facebook, Microsoft, Google, Qualcomm, Intel, vista, Silver Lake, general Atlantic and KKR. Finally, in the 14 rounds of financing within three months, it obtained more than $20 billion by transferring 33% of the company's shares. This financing not only enabled jio platforms to obtain nearly 130 billion yuan of assets, but also made the company more closely related to the business of these world-class technology giants. Among them, Google acquired 7.73% of the shares of jio platforms for us $45 in July 2020. The deeply customized Android system Pragati OS (similar to Xiaomi MIUI) jointly developed by Google and jio platforms was also put on the agenda after this financing. 02 "One billion months of life" that Google can't create In short, jio platforms is not the first local operator Google cooperates with in India. Google's plan in the Indian market began with the Android one project in 2014. In 2014, the monthly life of Android exceeded 1 billion. Nevertheless, Pichai found that there are still many people around the world who do not use smartphones. Therefore, at the Google I / O conference this year, Pichai, who wanted to "one more billion", announced a new plan - Android one. Although Android one is an initiative of Google to promote its own software services and products, it is also considered to be a leap plan to promote the mobile phone market from functional machines to smartphones to a certain extent. To this end, it took Google six months to find a strategic partner, MediaTek, based on Google's Android system and MediaTek's chip, to provide a complete set of software and hardware solutions for mobile phone manufacturers. A common feature of smartphones using this scheme is "cheap". The reference design scheme initially given by Google directly reduced the cost to about $100 (about 640 yuan). In Google's view, it was already very cheap at that time. It sounds like a good plan to replace feature phones with cheap smartphones. Even this plan seems likely to replicate a fake mobile phone market in India. However, when the first batch of smartphones that Google cooperated with three Indian local operators (micromax, karbonn and spice) were put into the market, they found that they overestimated the energy of Android one and underestimated the intensity of competition in the Indian mobile phone market. After statistics, there were more than 1000 Android phones on the Indian market in 2014. The selling prices of these phones were generally within $100, while the selling prices of Android one were generally higher than $100. The price advantage originally envisaged by Google disappeared. From the subsequent market sales data, the Android one project shipped only 800000 units in the first year in India, the main target market, which was not as good as Xiaomi, which entered the Indian market in the same year. Another thing that Google didn't expect was that micromax, which participated in Google's Android one project at that time, sold more than 3 million units in 2014, and once ranked first in the Indian market, surpassing Samsung, but these phones were not Android one phones. The reason why this situation was encountered was that Google had too many constraints on the selection of Android one mobile phone components at that time. You should know that the selection of each component will affect the cost of the whole machine, which is difficult for Indian OEM manufacturers who are highly sensitive to price. Pichai later re judged the price of the Indian smartphone market. The zinc industry noted that three years later, Pichai, who was already the CEO of Google at that time, said in an interview with foreign media, "I think the more appropriate price in the Indian market should be $30." However, the actual situation in 2014 is that one side is the fast-growing Android Market, and the other side is the difficulty of Android one. When Google launched the redesigned Android official website in September 2016, people found that Android one could not be found on the new official website. This year, Android one was hidden in a low-key snow. Later, Google repeatedly restarted the Android one project, tried to relax the relevant policies of Android one, tried to cooperate with voice holding in Africa, and even cooperated with Xiaomi in 2017 on a midrange mobile phone Xiaomi A1 based on Android one. However, none of this has enabled Android one to create a new "billion month life". However, after years of painstaking operation, Chinese mobile phone manufacturers have quickly gained a foothold in India. So far, among the top five mobile phone brands in India's smartphone market, Chinese brands occupy four exclusive seats, and the four manufacturers account for more than 70% in total. At this time, Google obviously needs a more radical new plan to capture the Indian smartphone market. 03 Pull the most expensive people and sell the cheapest mobile phones The latest data show that in 2020, India's per capita GDP was US $2000, only one-fifth of China's per capita GDP, which makes cheap smart phones still a big demand in India. It is precisely because of this demand that there has been a "24 yuan mobile phone" farce in India. In 2016, ringing bells, an Indian mobile phone manufacturer founded only one year ago, released a smart phone freedom 251 with a price of only 251 rupees (about 24 yuan). This smart phone was developed with the support of the "make in India" project of the Indian government. Then Indian defense minister parikar also personally attended the product launch. Once the mobile phone was released, the media dug up a lot of materials: "the freedom 251, which claims to be" made in India ", is actually OEM in China"; "The prototype displayed by ringing bells to the media is actually a shell product, but the mobile phone logo is replaced with the logo of its own product" The smartphone with an actual cost of 2500 rupees (about 247 yuan) was finally declared bankrupt because it failed to get government subsidies and its founder mohit goel was jailed on suspicion of fraud. Ironically, it was later found that freedom 251 was also on Google's 2016 annual hot search list, ranking second only to iPhone 7 in the field of consumer technology. Unlike mohit goel, Ambani sits in reliance group, India's largest private enterprise, and Ambani's jio platforms is India's largest telecom operator. After replacing Ma Yun as Asia's richest man in 2018, Ambani's value once exceeded that of world-class celebrities such as Buffett and musk. So Ambani did what goel didn't. In 2016, with the launch of the 4G service of jio platforms, a mobile phone called jiophone was also launched. Local users only need to pay a deposit of 1500 rupees (about 157 yuan) to use jiophone free of charge for three years, and the mobile phone can be refunded in full after three years. Through the "contract machine mode", jio platforms makes jiophone a free mobile phone. Whatever the gimmick or business model, with the selling point of "0 yuan purchase", this jiophone supporting 4G network sold 17 million units in 2017 and quickly became the first mobile phone brand in India. Perhaps, many people will wonder why such a fierce Indian local mobile phone brand has not been able to defeat Xiaomi ov from China in the past few years? This is because the two have not been on the same track before. Jiuphone is actually a mobile phone form between a functional machine and a smart machine. It is equipped with Kai OS operating system born from Firefox OS, supports 4G network and has a full keyboard. Neil Shah, director of market research at counterpoint, publicly pointed out in 2017 that the compromise design approach of jiophone has hindered the upgrading of the Indian mobile phone market from a functional machine to a smart machine. It is such a jiophone, which is not counted as one of the smart phones by major market research institutions, once occupied more than 30% of the market share of functional machines in India, ranking first. Such jiophones and Ambani are obviously Pichai's best allies in attacking the Indian smartphone market. 04 Will Chinese mobile phone manufacturers be subverted? After cooperating with Google, this jio platforms is no longer a function machine, but a pure blood machine