Google sees India crucial for its overall biz, slashes prices of Pixel phones

livemint.com:

Mint. His statement came on the sidelines of the global unveiling of Google's latest smartphones—the Pixel 9 series. This is the first time that the company launched its entire portfolio of new smartphones, as well as accessories such as the Pixel Watch 3 smartwatch and and Pixel Buds Pro 2 pair of earphones, in India.

The move marks Google's growing interest in India, where the Pixel phones have never quite taken off the way Apple has succeeded in the past two years with its iPhones, or Samsung with its Galaxy Z/S lineups of flagship smartphones. According to Tarun Pathak, director at market research firm Counterpoint India, Google’s share as of last year was a meagre 0.25% of the domestic smartphone market. For reference, more than 150 million smartphones were sold in India last year, and the country has an estimated 750 million active smartphone users as of the first half of this year.

Google, therefore, sold less than 400,000 units of its Pixel phones in India last year. Pathak said that in the first six months of this year, Google’s sales of the Pixel smartphones rose to 0.4%—thus selling around 275,000 units so far. On Monday, Google also announced through its official social media platforms that the first batch of made-in-India Pixel 8 smartphones were ready to be shipped to distributors and retailers.

Ramachandran added on Tuesday that going forward, the Pixel 8a is the next in line to be assembled out of a Chennai plant. “As of now, we don’t have a timeline for when the Pixel 9 series will be built in India as well. But on overall terms, our approach will be to bring the best of our offerings to India, and building locally does help in cost benefit as well as building scale in the India market—both of which