Mukesh Ambani led Reliance Jio has once again caused a major disruption; and this time, it is the feature and smartphone market, with a single go.Reliance Jio announced the ‘India ka Intelligent Smartphone’ dubbed JioPhone at its 40th AGM meeting held in Mumbai, India. The JioPhone comes with 4G VoLTE support and offers several smart features. While the company sold the affordable 4G VoLTE smartphones through LYF branding, the JioPhone has only the Jio branding. Interestingly, the JioPhone was introduced as a smartphone instead of a feature phone and the smart features justify that. It comes with 4-way navigation buttons along with the Alphanumeric keypad.
Jio has launched the much awaited Jio Phone, which is effectively free of charge. After data and voice, the market of phones will never be the same in India, courtesy Reliance Jio.
7 Facts About Jio Phone
- Pay Rs 1500 refundable deposit, and get the Jio phone. Rs 1500 shall be refunded back after 36 months
- By paying Rs 153/month, users of Jio phone can get free voice, free data, free SMS.
- Pre-booking shall start from August 24th, and testing will begin from August 15th. Handsets would be delivered effective September 1st, on first-come-first-serve basis
- Hailed as ‘India ka smartphone’, Jio Phone will support 22 languages and would be fully VoLTE based.
- Another plan of 309 per month will enable connecting the phone with the TV, so that the user can watch the content streamed via Jio phone on the TV, directly.
- Daily recharge of Rs 24 and weekly recharge of Rs 54 also offered, for those who don’t wish to opt for monthly plans
- Jio phone will support NFC payment platform, making Jio phone one of the few selected feature phones to have this feature
Jio Taps The Underserved: Feature Phone Market
Ever since Jio was launched, analysts have described hardware as the most crucial challenge for Jio’s expansion. Considering that Jio was based on VoLTE interface, only those who had 4G phones were able to use it. And Mukesh Ambani knew this fact.
While announcing the launch of Jio phone during Reliance Industries’ 40th AGM, he said, “There are 78 crore mobile phones in India. However, in this 78 crore, there are more than 50 crore feature phone users, who have been left out. They can neither afford the cheapest LTE smartphone, nor the exorbitant cost of data.”
This is the exact audience which Jio aims to target now, and the offer looks sizzling to say the least.
Claims Made By Reliance Regarding Jio’s Expansion
During the AGM, several important announcements and claims were made by Mukesh Ambani:
- In the last 40 years, Reliance has expanded their m-cap from Rs 10 crore to Rs 5,00,000 crore, which is a compound growth rate of 32%
- Overall, RIL has 2,50,000 employees all over the world
- In the last 10 months, Jio has broken several records: They added 7 customers every second, every single day of their inception.
- Jio is now world’s largest mobile network, as 125 crore GB has been consumed till date
- Jio has undertaken world’s largest migration from pre-paid to post-paid as 100 million customers are now using post-paid services by Jio
- Jio wants to cover 99% of Indians with their services.
- Jio has created a network of 10,000 offices and 10 lakh outlets
As per Mukesh Ambani, Jio will churn out 50 lakh Jio phones every week, starting September.
If Jio is able to convert existing feature phone users into Jio phone users, then it would be one of the biggest coups ever witnessed in Indian telecom industry.
One of the most innovative features of the JioPhone is the voice assistant in regional languages. Though the JioPhone is announced to be free, the company will be collecting 100% refundable deposit of Rs. 1,500 to avoid the misuse. The users will be paid back only after 3 years from the date of JioPhone purchase. Talking about the availability, the JioPhone will be available for beta testing from August 15th and the pre-booking starts from August 24th. The sales start from early September on the first-come first-serve basis.
Jio also announced to make 5 million units available every week. The users of JioPhone can enjoy unlimited voice calls, 4G data, and access to Jio apps for just Rs. 153. It comes with a validity of 28 days and the unlimited 4G data has a FUP of just 500MB per day. Apart from the Rs. 153 plan, the JioPhone users can also avail the small recharge packs of Rs. 24 for two days and Rs. 54 per week. The screen mirroring is another innovative feature for a feature phone. For streaming content from JioPhone, the customers have to opt for Rs. 309 plan instead of Rs. 153 basic monthly plan.
They will be getting a JioPhone TV cable that can even be plugged into any TV including the older CRT TVs. The device also supports the 22 Indian regional languages. It sports a 2.4″ QVGA display and is said to come in compact form factor. The JioPhone also got the SOS feature which can be enabled by long pressing 5 on the keypad.Once SOS is activated, it sends the location and emergency alert to pre-selected contacts and calls the 112 emergency number. It even packs torch light, FM Radio, MicroSD card slot and more.
There is also NFC support for making virtual payments but it will be enabled later this year via automatic software update. Jio also showed the demo of the built-in Namo app for listening to the Prime Minister’s Mann Ki Baat. With over 125 million users, its market share will see huge surge once the JioPhone is made available in the market. According to the Jio, its 4G network coverage will be more than 2G coverage of the other networks in the next one year.
One of the most innovative features of the JioPhone is the voice assistant in regional languages. Though the JioPhone is announced to be free, the company will be collecting 100% refundable deposit of Rs. 1,500 to avoid the misuse. The users will be paid back only after 3 years from the date of JioPhone purchase. Talking about the availability, the JioPhone will be available for beta testing from August 15th and the pre-booking starts from August 24th. The sales start from early September on the first-come first-serve basis.
Jio also announced to make 5 million units available every week. The users of JioPhone can enjoy unlimited voice calls, 4G data, and access to Jio apps for just Rs. 153. It comes with a validity of 28 days and the unlimited 4G data has a FUP of just 500MB per day. Apart from the Rs. 153 plan, the JioPhone users can also avail the small recharge packs of Rs. 24 for two days and Rs. 54 per week. The screen mirroring is another innovative feature for a feature phone. For streaming content from JioPhone, the customers have to opt for Rs. 309 plan instead of Rs. 153 basic monthly plan.
They will be getting a JioPhone TV cable that can even be plugged into any TV including the older CRT TVs. The device also supports the 22 Indian regional languages. It sports a 2.4″ QVGA display and is said to come in compact form factor. The JioPhone also got the SOS feature which can be enabled by long pressing 5 on the keypad.Once SOS is activated, it sends the location and emergency alert to pre-selected contacts and calls the 112 emergency number. It even packs torch light, FM Radio, MicroSD card slot and more.
There is also NFC support for making virtual payments but it will be enabled later this year via automatic software update. Jio also showed the demo of the built-in Namo app for listening to the Prime Minister’s Mann Ki Baat. With over 125 million users, its market share will see huge surge once the JioPhone is made available in the market. According to the Jio, its 4G network coverage will be more than 2G coverage of the other networks in the next one year.
We will keep you updated.
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