The Reliance JioPhone is one of those revolutionary devices which has taken the Indian feature phone market by storm. This new survey which was conducted by Credit Suisse confirms the doubts of many people by revealing some shocking statistics about the sales of JioPhone. It has been predicted that the marker for the total units sold can stand at around 40 million for this feature phone by Reliance Jio. The report highlighted that the JioPhone had a massive 36% stake in the entire feature phone market in January-March quarter of 2018, which we reported earlier today.
The survey quoted "This implies Jio Phone sales of around 21 million for the quarter or roughly 7 million per month." Also, there are speculations that the exit-run rate of March could also be much higher because of the Rs 49 plan which was introduced in late January. The report continued "Now compare this with net adds reported by Jio running at 8-9 million for January and February 2018 (March data is awaited - we will likely get to see a higher number when the company reports on April 27)…Overall, we conclude that Jio Phone is already a meaningful contributor to growth for Jio. We estimate the total Jio Phones sold so far could be close to around 40 million.”
Although there is so much data to testify that JioPhone is bringing huge sales figure for Reliance Jio, it is still difficult to pinpoint whether the figures represent the actual sales of the feature phone market in the pre-JioPhone time period or this the effect of people buying JioPhone as their secondary device.
The report further went onto say "Given the mood in the incumbent camp on this topic (that is, not much alarm), the latter could be the more likely situation currently. Exit of smaller players (most recently Aircel) could be cushioning the blow for incumbents -- but that is a cushion that may not last for long."
This survey has however made it very clear that JioPhone has crossed its early adopter stage and is now becoming favourite for a lot of users because of its plus points. Further, WhatsApp is already working on bringing its version to the JioPhone, which would be another plus point for the 4G feature phone. "Sooner than later, it could start eating into installed subscriber base of incumbents. Going forward, the potential release of KaiOS version of Whatsapp could be an added catalyst for sales of this device," added Credit Suisse. These new developments related to the JioPhone definitely pose a risk for the incumbents.
The topic of data usage was also taken up on the report, regarding which the survey pointed out that the average data usage per month for smartphone users was 10GB. Credit Suisse is also expecting feature phone users to touch that mark very soon, thanks to Reliance Jio's aggressive push.
