Rama Venkat and Sankalp Phartiyal

NEW DELHI, (Reuters) – Reliance Industries announced Friday that its 4G low-cost smartphone will be available in shops starting with Diwali. It was jointly developed by Jio, an Indian telecoms venture, and Alphabet (NASDAQ)’s Google.

Reliance announced that the smartphone will be priced at 1,999 Rupees and the remainder can be paid in monthly installments.

Pragati (which means progress) is the tweaked Android OS that comes with this device. This operating system was designed to appeal to first-time smartphone purchasers and includes voice assistance and quick translations in 10 Indian language languages.

Sundar Pichai, Google’s CEO, stated this week that Jio and Google had partnered to develop local languages so more Indians could use their smartphones.

It is like the foundation. I can see it as such. I also think it will last for at least three to five more years.

“End up having lots of impact,” Pichai declared in Alphabet’s third-quarter earnings conference.

Pricing for the Jio-Google smartphone will be a challenge to Chinese sellers such as Xiaomi (OTC) and BBK Electronics. These brands include Realme, Oppo, and Vivo. India is the second largest smartphone market in the world, with a market of over $2Bn.

Jio also plans to make use of the phone to lure 2G users away from Vodafone (NASDAQ 🙂 Idea or Bharti Airtel).

However, the smartphone’s price could make it more expensive for some users than basic features phones. This would be a problem according to Navkendar Singh, a tech researcher at IDC India. It also might dampen Mukesh Ambani, Reliance’s boss, and tycoon billionaire,” ambitious plan to “make India 2G-free”.

Singh said to Reuters, “This isn’t affordable… Jio is expecting a feature telephone or 2G user almost quadruple its telco expenditure per month.” While this doesn’t mean it won’t sell; it might. However, this is a far cry from the affordable mark.

($1 = 74.8640 Indian Rupees)