Google unveiled two affordable smartphones in the Philippines built from the Android One program, a global initiative to bring high-quality smartphones to emerging markets.
The two phones, developed by local manufacturers Cherry Mobile and MyPhone, will retail for PHP5,000 (USD113.4) in the coming weeks.
Caesar Sengupta, Vice President, Product Management, Google, said the Philippines is the sixth country in Asia where the Android One program was rolled out, after India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Indonesia.
Android One phones come with the latest version of Android Lollipop and the two phones that will sell in the Philippines will both have 4.5” FWVGA display, Cortex A7 1.3 GHz Quad-Core processor, 1GB RAM, 2 SIM card slots, and front and rear facing cameras and 4GB and 8GB storage (expandable to 32GB).
Sengupta said Google is also working to reduce data costs for Android One users in the Philippines. For one, the data compression feature on the Android One Chrome browser helps compress the amount of data flowing between the phone and the Internet.
The Philippines is one of the few countries where YouTube users can take videos offline to watch later during periods of low or no Internet connectivity.
Telecommunications companies Smart Communications Inc, and Sun Celluar are pitching in effort to make the mobile experience better for users through free over-the-air (OTA) updates to the Android operating system and certain amounts of app downloads from Google Play for the first six months.
Globe Telecom, on the other hand will be working with Android One users to better access the Internet through its network.
Ken Lingan, Google’s Country Manager for the Philippines, said during the launch that the country now has over 44 million Internet users. The projection is that by 2016 there would be 66 million Filipinos online.
“Currently, the Philippines is already the second largest Internet market in Southeast Asia, the 6th largest in Asia. The numbers are growing. There is a massive potential that we see for e-commerce and growing content online because as we see more Filipinos going to the Internet primarily through a mobile device,” he said.
Sengupta said that it is part of Google’s mission to help connect the four billion or so people around the world who still do not have access to smartphones and are not yet online, mostly in emerging markets like the Philippines.
“There are lots of first smartphone users do not really get a very nice experience with their gadgets, the software are pretty old and connectivity is expensive and the bandwidth limited,” Sengupta added. “We put together this programming called Android One as an integrated approach to try to solve these problems.”
Mobile Internet in the Philippines is growing 112 percent year-on-year. By the end of this year, Google expects 50 percent of the population with smartphones. This growth is largely being powered by Android.
