Brands who feel like they’ve already saturated the North American and European markets are looking at expanding to developing countries to strengthen their product line. Google is reportedly making a play for one of the biggest emerging markets at least when it comes to technology: India. Their parent company, Alphabet, will supposedly roll out an India-focused strategy and this will include bringing more hardware to the region, specifically the Google Home smart speakers, Pixelbook, home automation products and possibly a mid-range smartphone as well.
Google has been meeting with trade partners in India, Malaysia, the UK, and US this last month and sharing with them their consumer products expansion plan. They will reportedly be bringing the Google Home and Google Home Mini to India to compete against the Amazon Echo products already available in the market. They will come out later this month and with it, a big-budget advertising campaign.
And if you really want to make a splash in the Indian market, you need to come out with a powerful but affordable smartphone. Google is planning a mid-range Pixel smartphone that will appeal to price-sensitive markets like India. They are looking at a July-August launch since the next flagship device from Google will probably arrive by November. Other products that they’re thinking of bringing to India include the Pixelbook, their Nest brand’s home automation products (doorbell, camera, alarm system, etc), and Google WiFi.
One of the retailers in the trade meet also said that Google isn’t planning to be overly aggressive in defeating rivals like Apple, Amazon, etc, but they do plan to increase their retail presence and increase product availability through their partners. They have seen how effective neighborhood mobile phone stores are and so they will probably focus on that as well.
VIA: Economic Times
