Google is doubling down on its focus on the Indian market with its Pixel devices, with strategies that include manufacturing commitments, channel expansion, and improved customer support. In this conversation with Mike Abary, Google’s VP of Devices and Services Business APAC, we dive into how the company is shaping its smartphone and smart home strategy in India, the role of affordability in driving growth, and what Indian consumers can expect from the Pixel lineup.
Mike, what can you tell us about Pixel’s journey in India?
Pixel has been in India for quite a number of years and our journey has been what I call up and down in the country. Maybe there were opportunities that we either did not take full advantage of that the Indian market represented for us, or that we were perhaps not ready to commit fully to what India was capable of giving or representing to our business.
So, let me give some examples. At the beginning stages of Pixel, we were producing a phone that was what I guess would be called very premium for India. At the time, the average selling prices of phones in India were far lower than they are today. There also were no affordability levers in India. So for the vast majority of consumers in India to be able to afford a premium device was significantly lower than it is today.
If you fast forward from let’s say even just six years ago, how India and the Indian smartphone market have evolved, it has evolved significantly since those days. I think that probably the biggest evolution in India has been the emergence of affordability. And what that has done is it’s given a massive swath of the population that was not able to have access to even mid-tier price smartphones. More consumers in India have access to a greater segment of phones and that is what has changed significantly. So we see the smartphone industry growing probably the fastest in the world of any market in India because of affordability levers. We have also seen Indian consumers because of their passion for innovation. That has always been there, and the innovation that they demand and expect has always been very high.
And so it bodes well for where Pixel is going because while we produce a premium phone, our phone represents today far more than what it did you know when we were in and out of India a few years ago.
We are representing Google’s best AI in a phone. We are committed to the Indian market because of our commitment to manufacturing there. We are expanding our channels in India. We were only been with a single partner in India and it’s an online partner. And now we are actually expanding offline. We’re now in more than 150 Large Format Retail Stores (LFRs).
There’s some news about Google setting up first-party retail stores in India. Any comment?
I cannot comment on that right now. But our channel strategy is quite robust. What we want to do is we want to make sure that we are available to more consumers around the country. That means that we have to expand our coverage. So both online and offline and that’s at least that’s what initially our plan is. So we have started with a partnership with both Croma and Reliance.
Again, we’re in over 150 stores although that’s not their full footprint. We want to make sure that we are starting in a way that’s sequential and logical, and that’s meaningful to both the partners as well as the consumers. And what that means is that we put really interesting and unique displays in those 150 Croma and Reliance stores that stand out. They stand out to the point where consumers can walk in and see a very differentiated fixture showcasing the best of the best of Google hardware, at least from a phone and phone ecosystem perspective.
And it’s doing well. It’s working. It’s a very competitive environment and we do need to stand out. We’re a latecomer so to speak in the smartphone segment in India. And so we believe that part of our strategy for trying to create uniqueness and differentiation is basically by having unique fixturing within the retail environment.
What about service and support? Is that also something that you’re ramping up?
Absolutely. We know as much as the Indian consumer has a high expectation on the product spec, the innovation that it brings, they also have an equally if not greater expectation on the support that the brands have to deliver. That is something that’s not lost on us.
So, we have launched what we call walk-in centres that are both multibranded as well as first-party walk-in centres. The number of multibranded walk-in centres is approximately 30 right now around the country. And those 30 serve approximately two dozen or more pin codes around the country. Now it is very modest in terms of the footprint overall. But we are building it out significantly and at scale and accelerating our expansion. So we plan to have nearly double the amount of um multibranded walk-in centers by the fourth quarter of this year.
We have also opened two first-party walk-in centres. These are Google-owned and operated, and they offer a slightly different experience; more catered to white glove service, where we’re providing top-tier turnaround times. We’re providing different support levels and have in-house same-day repair capabilities.
So those are all things that we know we have to continue to build out in order for the service and support infrastructure expectations to be met.
Specifically from an India perspective, the A series plays a crucial role in the Pixel lineup. The price point that it comes in is very tricky because people generally tend to be a little more sensitive in that segment. And in India, there are players who offer better specs. How does Google plan to compete in that segment?
Our intention with the A series has always been what we call premium entry. Premium entry basically is the most affordable price point that we have in our portfolio, which provides access to the Pixel portfolio to more consumers because of that sort of entry premium price point. What we want to deliver from a product perspective is the best of Google and the best of Google’s experiences in that price segment.
Now we don’t want to make compromises in terms of what that experience can offer. What we do want to do though is we want to focus on what this product can provide. The kind of value that stands out beyond the competition in a very competitive price segment.
A lot of it has to do with AI capability. We feel other products in the same price segment cannot match what our Pixel A series can deliver.
Examples are things like computational photography, capabilities like Best Take, Magic Eraser and high-res zoom. We are known for our camera capabilities and our A series is in my opinion delivering the best computational photography in its class period. And there’s a lot of really great value that I think consumers derive from our camera capability.
The other one is on-device AI. While you have AI capability that is both dependent on on-device as well as in the cloud, there are certain AI tasks that require a processor to be capable of handling them on-device. We are delivering on-device AI in that premium entry segment. So that’s another value that we tout with our A series segment.
The third is that we’re continuing to do what we call Pixel Drops. We are delivering new software capabilities constantly on the entire portfolio of Pixel devices including the A series. So in the case of the A series, while you’re buying a particular device with certain capabilities today, those capabilities actually increase over time which makes it even more valuable over the lifetime ownership of that device. And so for example, we’re going to implement all of the latest Gemini upgrades on the A series as well as the entire portfolio. I’ll tell you it is very exciting and it’s very cool and it’s going to be in my opinion extremely helpful to consumers that own Pixel.
Google has so many devices in the smart home space but we don’t see many of them in India. How are you looking at that segment specifically from an India perspective because it’s a big market and the IoT segment is growing?
We were actually selling Nest products in India before. We were also selling Fitbit devices in India before and we still have some small presence in India. But let me talk specifically about smart home because I think that’s where you’re more geared to.
So from a smart home perspective, the reason why smart smart home has been challenged is because there are multiple platforms and not every device that’s meant for the home works with one another. This has been a legacy issue for the entire industry.
The Samsung SmartThings devices works only with Samsung for example. Before Nest was only compatible with certain types of of devices in the home. And what needed to happen is a forward evolution of how to fix the lack of compatibility across the multitude of smart home devices, which needed to be addressed. And we felt that could be addressed through a consortium. The consortium basically that we are a part of and has also been joined and led by other smart home forward-thinking companies is called Matter.
Matter is addressing these compatibility issues across all devices. If something is Matter-enabled then there’s a certainty of compatibility.
As we’ve developed the Matter platform across all of our smart home devices first, we then need to take advantage of how to proliferate our first-party devices next. So we wanted to to develop the platform first and then focus on our devices. We think we’re at that turning point right now where we’re now focused on delivering new first-party devices.
We’re not 100 percent there yet, but that’s why you haven’t seen new products come out from our smart home division because we’re working on making sure that the platform was solidified first. Then, work on how do we deliver our devices next.
So in short, watch this space.
