Indian smartphone company Lava will be one of the hardware partners for Google's Android Go program. Sources familiar with the matter told Killer Features that Lava is indeed one of the companies to launch Android Go powered smartphones soon.
The company has been a long-standing ally of Google. In 2015, the company had launched Lava Pixel V1 under Android One program. It also was a partner for Google's payment app Tez making it a pre-installed app on some of its phones.
The company recently raised a fund of $30 million from China-based Tsinghua Holdings. Lava wants to invest the money into local handset manufacturing. Our sources tell us that Lava is in process of setting up another manufacturing plant in India which will be operational by next year. Killer Features have reached out to Lava for comments.
Google originally announced Android Oreo Go edition at an event in Delhi called Google For India. At the event, the company announced the features and framework of the program but refused to mention partners. Xiaomi and Micromax are other rumoured partners but there is no confirmation on that. Android Go is aimed at providing the polished Android experience on low-end phones with RAM as low as 512 MB.
Earlier this year, Google announced the rebirth of Android One program with a phone by Xiaomi called Mi A1.