Amid reports of ban on Chinese budget smartphones, Mukesh Ambani reveals Reliance Jio and Google are working on an affordable 5G smartphone

• Reliance Jio is set to begin 5G services in the country by Diwali this year.
• The company is also working on developing an affordable 5G smartphone with Google.
• The company may benefit if Chinese companies are banned from the Indian budget smartphone segment.

Over the past few weeks, there have been reports that the government is planning on banning Chinese companies from the budget smartphone segment. This is reportedly aimed at boosting domestic companies as Chinese companies dominate the Indian smartphone segment.

Experts have been sceptical about how beneficial this will be as Chinese smartphone makers account for nearly 80% of the market share in the budget segment, and they believe domestic companies may not be able to fill the void left by the Chinese smartphone makers.

Reliance Jio has announced that 5G services will launch in India this Diwali, starting in key cities of India, including Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai.

During the 45th annual general meeting of Reliance Industries, Mukesh Ambani also announced that the company’s telecom arm, Reliance Jio, is working with Google to develop affordable 5G smartphones.

Reliance Jio may benefit from a ban

As domestic companies may not be able to meet the demand if Chinese companies are banned from the budget smartphone segment, Reliance Jio may benefit from this.

Reliance already has good experience with churning out affordable smartphones. The company’s Lyf brand had a market share of around 7% in
Q1 2017 and occupied the fifth position in the Indian smartphone segment.

The company’s affordable JioPhone became one of the most popular budget phones in the country during 2018 and accounted for over 35% of the feature phones market share in Q1 2018, as per a Counterpoint report.

Experts also believe that Jio may benefit from a ban in India. “Sub ₹12,000 category will see very careful participation from Chinese players unless there is clarity. It surely is an advantage Jio but making 5G under ₹12,000 is also not easy,” said Tarun Pathak, Research Director, Counterpoint Research.

Currently, it is not clear how the upcoming device from Jio and Google will be priced. However, we expect the company to launch devices under ₹12,000. We should know more about the upcoming smartphone in the coming days.

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