[NEWS] KaiOS raises $50M more, hits 100M handsets powered by its feature phone OS – Loganspace

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Whereas Android and iOS contain locked up the marketplace for smartphone running systems, a characteristic cell telephone platform that has the excellence of being the sphere’s third excellent mobile OS is announcing a hefty round of funding to continue its expansion.KaiOS, which makes the OS that powers devices worship Nokia’s characteristic telephones and Jio’s devices out of India, has raised $50 million from Cathay Innovation (which led the round) and old investors Google and TCL Holdings.

The funding takes the entire raised by KaiOS — which has now shipped 100 million devices across 100 countries — to $72 million. It comes lower than a one year afterGoogle invested $22 million within the the commercial— a strategic round that also marked KaiOS starting the strategy of rising native integrations of a host ofGooglecompanies and products worship Maps and (extra currently) Assistant into the platform.

KaiOS is no longer disclosing its valuation however Sebastien Codeville, its CEO, confirmed to be that it’s far “positively up.” (Pitchbook place it at avery modest $43.75 millionclosing one year on the assist of Google’s earlier round.)

We in actuality knew reasonably about this roundassist in February, at MWC in Barcelona, when KaiOS introduced novel handset companions and a raft of up-to-the-minute aspects. A spokesperson for KaiOS informed TechCrunch that the delay in closing the deal and making it public became once due to a must coordinate with a host of stakeholders.

As it turned out, KaiOS’s timing for this announcement turned out to be appealing sharp. The colossal files this week in mobile is what roughly an affect Huawei will face within the wake of a US regulation barring it from  doing commercial within the US. One pattern in that story has beenappropriate how severe Huawei is about constructing its contain running machineto interchange Google’s Android and its associated companies and products.

This is colossal files because whereas Huawei is presently the sphere’s 2d-excellent mobile cell telephone maker, we haven’t viewed any platform affect reasonable mobile cell telephone traction against the hegemony of iOS and Android exterior of China — including the failure of Firefox OS, which retreated from the marketmost sharp to reemerge, phoenix-worship, as KaiOS two years within the past — in allotment thanks to the intensive ecosystems which contain coalesced around these two.

But whereas all eyes are on smartphones, KaiOS’s funding and total exclaim represents an titillating different for markets, carriers and patrons that would additionally per chance be within the marketplace for what KaiOS refers to as “tidy characteristic telephones.”

This day, the corporate counts firms worship Reliance Jio, Google, Facebook, Twitter, Orange, MTN and Qualcomm amongst its companions, and it’s been constructing an titillating, two-pronged approach for focusing on of us both in developed and establishing markets.

As Sebastien Codeville, the CEO of KaiOS, describes it, in rising markets (that are KaiOS’s main target), its devices are being bought by first-time cell telephone users, or these which contain had very frequent, non-files cellphones and are upgrading with out the colossal step and expense of smartphones. “We are bringing of us to files superhighway usage with a application they are mindful of,” he acknowledged of the make articulate. “Different key characteristics are a long battery existence, a keyboard, and a extra resistant touch panel.”

The developed market, he added, became once an titillating opportunity thanks to the amount of professionals and others who establish on pared-down devices for weekend exercise to unplug from their on each day foundation grind.

Many had left characteristic telephones for ineffective with the exclaim in reputation of devices worship the iPhone, app retail outlets and unquestionably apps themselves. But learn from Counterpoint chanced on that characteristic telephones restful accounted for nearly 25 p.c of all handset shipments in Q3 of closing one year, working out to a $28 billion buck market opportunity within the years forward. This day there are some 1.5 billion characteristic cell telephone users, an titillating number to connect in mind as smartphone gross sales continue to in actuality feel the crunch. 

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