Google partners MTN, Infinix as it launches “Andriodone”

Google entered Nigeria market on Tuesday with a new kind of Smartphone, “Andriodone” in a partnership with the telecommunication giant, MTN and mobile phone manufacturer, Infinix Mobility Limited.

In a well attended event held at Landmark Centre, Lekki, “Andriodone Ng” graced the Africa market through the Nigerian popular e-market, Jumia Nigeria.

According to Caesar Sengupta, the Vice President, (Product Development) Google, who flown in from California, “Andriodone” is a product born out of the partnership between Google, MTN Nigeria and Infinix Mobility Limited.

He said that Google had come up with Andriodone as a new platform to connect Nigerians to the world at very low costs of both the hard and software.

He noted that about 10.2 million Nigerians had access to the internet as at 2014 and that the best way to leverage on the growing population of that connectivity was to launch a quality platform like Andriodone into Nigeria marketplace.

“As we expect another one million Nigerians to connect to the internet, Google is creating this platform to give adequate information that will transform users, most of who operate Small and Medium Scale businesses. It is going to be a learning platform where people put their contents online,” he stated.

According to him, the market will be expanding to Kenya, Egypt, Morocco and Ghana as Google prepares to create new springboard for Africa.

Speaking, the Managing Director of MTN Nigeria, Michael Ikpoki said that partnering with Google was borne out of the passion to connect more Africans to the internet.

According to him, 68 per cent of Nigerians are not connected to the internet but the introduction of Andriodone will enable more people to get connected and also enhance entrepreneurship and innovation.

He explained that MTN would be providing efficient data infrastructure with 1GB of data at N500 on Andriodone for 12 months while it would also help generate contents that are relevant to the market.

“It is a common passion for innovation. It is exciting not only for us as a company but for us as Nigerians because the product is coming to Nigeria first before any other African country,” he said.

Andriodone uses one tenth of data and in a month time, according to Sengupta will be useful for offline navigation and Youtube offline.