The Mukesh Ambani led telecom operator, Reliance Jio Infocomm is planning to launch large-screen smartphones for users of feature phones who would like to upgrade to such a device. As per an ET Telecom report, in its next move, Reliance Jio will be working with its partners to develop an affordable smartphone. Reliance Jio’s head of sales and channel and development, Sunil Dutt told ET, “We are trying to work with partners who can bring in affordable large-screen smartphones for a large mass of customers who are yet to make a shift to a 4G smartphone, so that they can experience the right kind of connectivity as well as the right kind of content on devices which are affordable.”
Reliance Jio in Talks With US Based Manufacturer Flex
When asked about the strategy for the upcoming months, the executive said that the company would be coming up with something or the other in every two or three months. Another relevant update revealed that Reliance Jio is in talks with US-based manufacturer Flex to produce about 100 million smartphones as the telco plans to rapidly enhance its market share by signing up these customers who would like to upgrade from a feature phone to a smartphone.
This would not be the first time when Reliance Jio would be working with smartphone manufacturers to bring down the effective cost of the devices. Reliance Jio has already partnered up with brands like Samsung, Xiaomi, Oppo and Apple to offer cashback and more attractive offers to bring down the effective price of devices. Reliance Jio has taken this path to target most of the 500 million feature phone users who are most likely to upgrade to a smartphone when the prices of the devices are more affordable.
Reliance Jio Riding the Wave of Success Owing to JioPhone
Dutt further spoke about this step, “Wherever we feel there are gaps in the market which the people are not able to address or not able to take a risk about because they have their own priorities at times, those are the markets that we will then want to address.”
In the past, Reliance Jio has benefited exceptionally well from the launch of its affordably priced feature phone, the JioPhone which has boosted Jio’s subscribers base especially with subscribers coming in from rural areas or tier 3 cities. This has come at the cost of falling revenues for the incumbents like Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea. Concluding his take on the issue, Dutt said, “There are billions of people who are on devices which do not support good data experience or rich content experience, for them we introduced JioPhone to start experiencing more content services of Jio like television, cinema, music, even YouTube, Facebook and WhatsApp.”
