Reliance Jio, in the last few months, has doubled its subscriber base. Contrary to what most people would believe, this new chunk of Reliance Jio subscribers represents mostly the rural India and JioPhone buyers. Thanks to Reliance Jio’s new pricing of the JioPhone, the Mukesh Ambani led telco has succeeded in substantially growing its subscriber base in just a matter of few months.
JioPhone Sales Number
As per a Financial Express report, in the July-August period, JioPhone brought 10 million new subscribers for Reliance Jio. Further, as per Mukesh Ambani's AGM speech, Reliance Jio was able to sell 25 million JioPhones starting since October 25, 2017, when the phone launched. Doing the math, Reliance Jio, in total has sold 35 million units of JioPhone in India as of today.
This significant and sudden spike in Reliance Jio’s JioPhone sales has been because of the latest pricing of the JioPhone which now retails for Rs 501 under an exchange offer. The initial price of the JioPhone, which was Rs 1,500 has been brought down to Rs 501 as part of this exchange scheme called the Monsoon Hungama Offer, where buyers can exchange their old device for a new JioPhone and pay an effective price of Rs 501.
Not only this, under the Monsoon Hungama Offer, Reliance Jio managed to double its subscriber base to up to 10-12 million up from 6-7 million, with almost half of them representing JioPhone users. Reliance Jio also lured in the customers by equipping the JioPhone with social media apps like YouTube, WhatsApp and Facebook which has also helped the telco in raking in a high amount of new subscribers most of whom spend their time on these social media apps only.
Analysts have reasoned that before this new offer was rolled out, the sales figures of JioPhone were not that impressive. However, with this new offer where the JioPhone retails at Rs 501 has more than made up for the past months. Undoubtedly, Reliance Jio has generated a lot of revenue courtesy of this step.
JioPhone Contribution
According to the stats, during Q2, Reliance Jio’s access service profit stood at Rs 7,125.69 crores while Bharti Airtel, the former market leader could only touch the figure of Rs 6,723.54 crores. The experts believe that tapping into the C-category circle has helped Reliance Jio in achieving unprecedented growth in terms of revenue and subscriber base. States like Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, Assam and North East, Odisha, and Bihar fall under this category, and Reliance Jio has successfully managed to bring subscribers from all these places.
It was because of Reliance Jio’s performance that the industry AGR in the circle rose to 17.2% from 12.8% while Jio’s own AGR rose to 17%, whereas the company’s AGR came down by 0.9% in metro regions.
Jio Grabs Over 11 Million New Users in July 2018
According to the latest Trai data for the month of July 2018, Reliance Jio grabbed a total of over 11 million users in a single month, much higher than any other telecom operator in the country.