Jio Bharat rocks feature phone market

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Telecom industry leader Reliance Jio is also seeing dominance in feature phones. According to a report by brokerage CLSA, the feature phone market in the country is seeing a boom. With the blockbuster sales of Reliance Jio Bharat 4G feature phones, the feature phone market grew 5% to 20 million units in the October-December quarter. According to the report, shipments of 4G handsets in the feature phone segment grew 63% to 8.2 million over the past three months, with Jio having a major share.

The telecom launched Jio Bharat 4G feature phones for Rs 999 in July last year. According to analysts and market trackers, Jio’s move boosted the feature phone segment, especially in the second half of 2023. International Data Corporation (IDC) said in its recent findings that Samsung exited the feature phone segment, but Transsion remained ahead in the market followed by Lava. Jio Phone, on the other hand, contributed significantly to the growth in the second half of 2023.

Increase in demand for Jio Bharat

Analysts believe that the demand for JioBharat has increased. This is the reason why Jio’s mobile users have grown rapidly, but it is indicating a flat growth in average revenue per user (ARPU) in the third quarter of the financial year 2023-24. According to Antique Stock Broking, Jio’s ARPU for the third quarter was flat at Rs 181.70, which can be attributed to lower ARPU due to adoption of JioBharat phones and free 5G data replacing 4G top-up data packs. CLSA said that 65% of Indian mobile handset shipments were smartphones, while their share declined by 6 percentage points QoQ and 5 percentage points YoY in the December quarter.