Reliance Jio planning to sell 5G smartphones for Rs 2,500-3,000
Reliance Jio is planning to launch a 5G smartphone for less than Rs 5,000 and gradually reduce the price to Rs 2,5003,000 a unit when it scales up the operation, according to a company official. The company will target 2030 crore mobile phone users who use 2G connection at present.
"Jio wants to bring the device for less than Rs 5,000. When we scale up the sales, it can be priced in the range of Rs 2,500-3,000," a company official said on the condition of anonymity. An email query sent to Reliance Jio did not elicit any response. At present, 5G smartphones are available in India in the price range starting from Rs 27,000.
Jio was the first company that launched 4G mobile phones in India free for consumers where they were required to pay a refundable deposit of Rs 1,500 for a Jio Phone.
At 43rd Annual General meeting, Reliance Industries Chairman and managing director Mukesh Ambani had asserted to make India "2G-mukt" (free of 2G connections) and emphasised on the need to accelerate migration of 350 million Indians (currently using 2G feature phone) to an affordable smartphone, at a time when India stands at the doorsteps of the 5G era Ambani had also announced Rs 33,737 crore investment by Google for a 7.7 per cent stake in Jio Platforms, and said Jio will partner with the US tech giant to build an Android-based smartphone operating system. The company is also working on its own 5G network equipment and has asked the Department of Telecom to allocate it spectrum for testing before exporting these products. The government is yet to heed to the request of Reliance Jio.
At present, India does not have 5G services and the government has not even allocated spectrum to telecom operators for running field trials aimed at promoting domestic ecosystem for the next generation technology. Active users' tally: Jio gains 2.5 million subscribers in July as Airtel, Vodafone Idea slip Reliance Jio gained 2.5 million active subscribers in July, reversing the decline seen in the previous month, while rivals Airtel and Vodafone Idea lost 0.4 million and 3.8 million active users respectively, latest reports based on TRAI data said. Although industry's overall wireless subscribers rose nearly 3.5 million in July -- the first month of such gains since February -- the total `active subscribers' count in July actually fell 2.1 million, as per TRAI data. "Industry's active subscriber base... in July was down 2.1 million at 956 million after decline of 2.8 million month-on-month in June," Axis Capital said in its recent report, crunching TRAI's monthly data. "Bharti Airtel has the maximum proportion (97 per cent) of its active wireless subscribers as against its total wireless subscribers on the date of peak VLR in the month of July 20," TRAI said. Against this, the proportion of active users for Reliance Jio was at about 78 per cent and for Vodafone Idea at 89.3 per cent, TRAI data showed.
In absolute terms, this pegged active subscriber count for Jio at 313 million users in July, as compared to Airtel's 310 million users, and VIL's 269 million. Overall, Jio added 3.5 million wireless subscribers to surge past the 400 million mark, and continues to lead with highest monthly net adds among telcos.