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Google invests up to $22 million in the OS powering Nokia feature phones!

Latest News
July 11
by Chris Eilers

Good news for Nokia today! According to the latest report, Google has decided to invest up to $22 million for HMD Global’s OS-powering Nokia feature phones line. What changes will this investment bring? Read on to find out!

KaiOS

Google invests up to $22 million in the OS-powering Nokia feature phones!

Today, we received the news regarding Google’s significant investment into the OS which powers Nokia feature phones! In details, most feature phones coming from this Finnish manufacturer now run on KaiOS, which was developed from the old Mozilla’s Firefox OS. For now, Google has been playing a significant part in the smartphone world with their Android operating system. On the other hand, the new KaiOS is making its way to the top slowly.

Besides, this OS has also appeared on some Nokia-branded feature phones like the Nokia 8110 and others such as TCL and Micromax. At first, Google’s investment seems a bit strange, since they already have the Android Go OS. However, KaiOS CEO Sebastien Codeville has shared his thought on the situation. “Google and KaiOS have also agreed to work together to make the Google Assistant, Google Maps, YouTube, and Google Search available to KaiOS users”.

Google

In details, the KaiOS is web-based and mostly aims for developers to use HTML5, Javascript, and CSS for apps. As a result, that makes it easy for Google to get these apps running on KaiOS. Moreover, they strategically ensure feature phones are using Google’s services and not competitors. Quite a smart move from the US brand! On the other hand, more than 40 million KaiOS-powered devices have shipped so far, according to TechCrunch. This is an impressive number for the feature phone market; despite the smartphone segment’s rise.

What changes will Google invests bring?

For now, Google Android is famous for taking up less space on your own low-end devices. However, KaiOS is also a good solution for such a segment, like the Nokia 8110 banana phone ship with 512MB of RAM and 4GB of storage. We can safely say that Google is covering itself for the future with a smart KaiOS investment.