Reliance Jio is set to launch a 5G smartphone for less than Rs 5,000 and intends to reduce the price deliberately to Rs 2,500-3,000 a unit after scaling up the operation.
The target of the company will be 20-30 crore mobile phone users who use a 2G connection currently.
A company official on the condition of being anonymous explained, Jio intends to launch the device for less than Rs 5,000. Once the operations are scaled up and sales increase, the company can price it in the range of Rs 2,500-3,000.
Reliance Jio is yet to make any official statement.
5G smartphones at present, are available in India in the price range starting from Rs 27,000.
The first company to launch 4G mobile phones in India was Reliance Jio, which was free for consumers after paying a refundable deposit of Rs 1,500.
Reliance Industries Chairman and managing director MukeshAmbaniat 43rd Annual General meeting showed his intention to make India 2G-mukt (free of 2G connections) and emphasized on the necessity to stimulate 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.
The Reliance Industries chairman also talked about Rs 33,737 crore investment made by Google for a 7.7 percent stake in Jio Platforms and announced Jio will partner with the US tech giant to build an Android-based smartphone operating system in India.
The company has asked the Department of Telecom to allocate it spectrum for testing before exporting these products as the company is also working on its own 5G network equipment.
However, the government has still not responded to the request of Reliance Jio.
Currently, India does not have 5G services and the government has still not allocated spectrum to telecom operators for running field trials which aim to promote the domestic ecosystem for the technology from the next generation.
Reliance Jio Last Week Became The First Mobile Service Provider To Cross The 40 Crore Customer Mark in India
As per the data published by telecom regulator TRAI last Monday, Reliance Jio emerged itself as the first mobile service provider to cross the 40 crore customer mark in India with a net addition of over 35 lakh subscribers in July amidst the lockdown.
The number of telephone subscribers in India increased from 1,160.52 million at the end of June to 1,164 million at the end of July 2020, indicating a 0.30 percent monthly growth rate. At the end of June, urban telephone subscriptions rose from 636.83 million to 638.46 million at the end of July 2020. Rural subscriptions during the same period rose from 523,69 million to 525,54 million. The monthly growth rate in July, for urban and rural telephone subscriptions, was 0.26% and 0.35%.
Cell phone connections in the country rose to 114.4 crores in July from 114 crores in June, with urban and rural connexions standing at 61.9 crores and 52.1 crores.
Fixed-line connections increased slightly to 1,98,20,419, after a number of years with the private telecom operators taking the lead, and Reliance jio leading the cartel.
Public sector telecom companies BSNL and MTNL and loss-making private firms Reliance Communications and Tata Teleservices continued to report downfalls In the fixed-line customer market,
Currently, the Indian mobile market is dominated by Reliance jio, standing tall with a 35.03 percent market share and 40,08,03,819 subscribers,
In July 32.6 lakh and 3.88 lakh, mobile customers were added by Bharti Airtel and BSNL. Vodafone Idea has lost over 37 lakh clients. 5,457 mobile service clients were also lost by State-run MTNL.
A broadband connection which is dominated by the mobile market, increased by 1.03 percent to 70.54 crores in July from 69.82 crores in June.
According to the TRAI report, at the end of July, the top five service providers accounted for 98.91 percent of the market share of total broadband subscribers.