Jio Building Entire Ecosystem With Multiple OEMs For Its 4G Feature Phone Jio Bharat

Reliance Jio Infocomm is collaborating with multiple original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) to build the entire ecosystem for its 4G feature phone Jio Bharat in India, its president Kiran Thomas said.

Speaking during the post-earnings call of parent Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL), Thomas said the company has designed the instrument in such a way that it can be delivered at under INR 1,000 price point.

“But unlike in the past, what we are doing is really creating an ecosystem. So not just us, but this design by Jio product is now being supported by multiple OEMs. And all of these are being created in India, the entire supply chain, the assembly is being done in India through multiple OEMs, with Jio as the technology provider,” Thomas said.

It must be noted that Jio unveiled the Jio Bharat 4G feature phone, priced at INR 999, earlier this month. The company then said that it would roll out the feature phone for the first 1 Mn users as part of a beta trial beginning July 7.

Commenting on the response for the phone, Thomas said, “So, it has really been received well in the past few days. Our idea is to quickly deploy about a million of these devices through our own offering as well as through the OEM partners, and to learn from it and adapt and in a very agile way, improve this product rapidly and continue that growth.”

Jio Platforms, the digital business subsidiary of RIL which also houses telecom company Jio, reported a consolidated net profit of INR 5,098 Cr in the quarter ended June 2023, up 12.5% year-on-year (YoY). Its average revenue per user (ARPU) grew 2.8% to INR 180.5 per month from INR 175.7 in the year-ago quarter and INR 178.8 in the preceding March quarter.

Anshuman Thakur, head of strategy at Jio, attributed this increase in ARPU to additional data consumption and increase in the tariff plans of consumers. 

“There were no tariff increases that we have enforced. The monthly data traffic on the Jio network was 11 exabytes, so data consumption continues to be very strong, driven by both 5G as well as some events during the quarter which resulted in higher data consumption. The data consumption was up 48.3% year on year, and that continues to grow every quarter at a very rapid pace, and we continue to see that trend on our network,” Thakur said.

On the performance of JioCinema, Thomas highlighted the success of the Indian Premier League (IPL) and said this has set the stage for future growth of the OTT platform. “I think looking forward, we can see even more content coming through the streaming format as compared to what has traditionally been a linear broadcast-oriented format… “ he said. 

It must be noted that Reliance, in its presentation for Q1, said that JioCinema generated higher revenue during the IPL than the TV platform as the OTT platform attracted 13 times the advertisers on the TV platform.

The launch of the Jio Bharat feature phone is part of Reliance Jio’s efforts to attract more 2G customers to its 4G network, thereby shoring up its revenue. Besides the phone, the company is also focussing on other devices. The company is reportedly looking at launching a new version of its JioBook laptop.