Reliance Jio 4G VoLTE Feature Phone Launched For Effective Price of Rs. 0; Huge Disruption?

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.

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

Check out our Video on Jio Phone [in Hindi]

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.

We will keep you updated.