The Silicon Review ^Asia

Google is currently focusing on improving search, voice assistant, and maps for its internet users by investing $22 million on KaiOS. The CEO of KaiOS, Sebastien Codeville mentioned in a statement that the funding will help the company to fast-track development and deploy globally. He also included, KaiOS enabled smart feature phones will allow us to connect the vast population that still cannot access the internet especially in emerging markets.

The mobile world is dominated by smartphones because around 1.6 billion were sold last year. At the same time feature phones also are being sold. It surely available in the market and isn’t dead yet because 450 to 500 million of them were shipped in 2017. The sales have actually grown faster over the years and are expected to do more this year.

KaiOS have also mentioned that there have been over 40 million KaiOS phones shipped till today. Maybe that is why Google has high hopes for KaiOS and the investment could be seen as a way of introducing its services to feature phones. But all in all, Codeville said that he is very excited to work with Google to deliver its services on more mobile devices. By implementing intelligent voice assistant for an affordable mobile device is really a revolution because it will help overcome the limitations a keypad phone brings.

The project started in 2017 and is said to have the latest technology present in it. Let us see if users will again go back to these feature phones.