Reliance Industries looks to storm entry-level 4G, 5G smartphone market

On Tuesday, during the company's first pandemic-forced virtual annual general meeting, Ambani outlined another vision to disrupt the mobile device market again.

 

BY  Surajeet Das Gupta  |  New Delhi  

 
The company, with its new partner Google, will build entry level 4G and 5G smartphones at the fraction of the existing cost based on optimisations to the Android operating system and the Playstore.

                            Source: business standard

  Four years ago, disbelief rippled through the audience at Reliance’s annual general meeting when Mukesh Ambani said he was launching 4G Volte smartphones under Reliance’s own brand name Lyf at an unbeatable price of Rs 2,999 when the average 4G smartphone at that time cost Rs 4000.
On Tuesday, during the company’s first pandemic-forced virtual annual general meeting, Ambani outlined another vision to disrupt the mobile device market again.
The company, with its new partner Google, will build entry level 4G and 5G smartphones at the fraction of the existing cost based on optimisations to the Android operating system and the Playstore.
If successful, the move could pose serious challenges to competing mobile companies, especially Vodafone-Idea. A large chunk of its customers are still on 2G and 3G. Bharti too will be affected, not to mention BSNL, which does even have a 4G service live, leave alone a phone.
In 2017, Jio entered the mobile device space by launching 4G feature phones bundled with data.
This was primarily to lower the bar for 2G customers who were reluctant to take the plunge and upgrade their phones from 2G to 4G by shelling out a good sum of money.
The phone was based on a non-Android platform — KaiOs — and lacked the ease of use and features of Google’s operating system. But the killer was the price: Rs 1,094 for both the phone and a data pack. The magic price worked. Jio grabbed over 100 million 2G subscribers from Vodafone-Idea and Bharti. The latter both failed to take on Jio with their own competing product.

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