JioPhone: After telecom companies, Reliance will now force feature phone makers to up their game

Key Highlights:

• The low-cost feature phone is projected to hit rural markets.
• 50 crore feature phones may be sold over the next four years in India.
• Q3 and Q4 of this year may see rapid adoption of 4G feature phones.

After shaking the telecom market a year ago, Reliance Industries on Friday decided to jostle the phonemakers from their slumber. 

At the 40th Reliance Industries Ltd’s annual general meeting, Chairman and Managing Director, Mukesh Ambani, assisted by Jio’s Directors Isha and Akash Ambani, announced the launch of JioPhone. 

“Today, I am delighted to announce that JioPhone will be available to all Indians for an effective price of – Rs 0,” Ambani said.

With many features similar to a smartphone, this feature phone introduces 4G technology network type in predominantly low-cost phones.

“If you look at the feature phone market it is still 150 million (15 crore) per year in terms of sales. We are expecting almost half a billion (50 crore) feature phones to be sold in the next five years or so. So there is enough demand in this market,” Neil Shah, Research Director at Counterpoint Research told Zeebiz.

JioPhone will have a 2.4-inch display and a micro SD card slot. It has a voice command feature and supports up to 22 Indian languages, the company said.

In his speech Ambani said, “JioPhone is a truly revolutionary phone that will transform the lives of 50 crore feature phone users."

“All these 400 million feature phones in the market and most of them are 2G subscribers of Airtel, Vodafone and others have not been able to access internet on their phones. What JioPhone does is it will connect these users to the internet for the first time,” Shah added.

Pre-book JioPhone on August 24; here are its specifications