Indian Cos See Google's Changes Bringing China-like Ecosystem In India: Rpt

Indian app developers believe that the unbundling of Google's app ecosystem in India will help them build new business models, according to a report by The Economic Times. They will be able to engage with more users with the help of hardware firms and new operating systems.

This may also facilitate the Indian developers to replicate the scene in China. The existence of multiple operating systems in China enables the users to have a wide variety to choose from.

"The possibilities are endless and it could even mirror the best part of China's ecosystem wherein there are multiple OS options and app stores that thrive and users can choose from — except that in India, Google too can exist as an option," Rohan Verma, CEO and executive director, MapmyIndia told ET.

"It will level the playing field and I feel this fragmentation will only help the ecosystem and provide users with the freedom of choice while challenging the monopoly that Google has built for itself," he added.

Following the penalty imposed by the Competition Commission of India (CCI), Google announced several changes in the manner in which it operates Android and the billing services on the Google Play store. Google had received directions from the antitrust watchdog in October which instructed the tech giant to bring about close to 20 changes in the way it operates in the country.

Murugavel Janakiraman, CEO, BharatMatrimony, told ET, "There are so many new avenues that this will open up for partnerships with OEMs or even with people creating something like a micro Play Store".

"But as of now, we don't have too many strong or compelling offerings to challenge Google as they have exploited their monopoly. However, going forward, such options could emerge wherein like Google leveraged Android, there could be other services or software players that could provide alternative offerings," Janakiraman added.

These changes will allow device manufacturers to decide on the applications they want to provide to their customers. So far, Google has been bundling multiple applications of its own with the Android operating system. Google is also making amends to its backend to allow non-compatible or forked variants of Android.