Reliance Jio corners 80% of 4G smartphone base; to reach 100 mn 4G feature phones by 2019: CLSA

Mukesh Ambani-driven Reliance Jio has cornered nearly 80% of the 4G smartphone base of India and the company is expected to get to 100 million 4G feature phones by March 2019, according to CLSA.

The company which had 146 million subscribers as of October 2017 as per TRAI data, has been able to reach 139 million smartphones out of 178 million smartphones in September 2017, CLSA depicted in its report. As the 4G smartphone base will continue to expand, Jio is expected to have its presence on 155 million 4G smartphones by March 2019.

Jio’s blended ARPU constituting of both smartphone and 4G feature phone users is expected to touch Rs 184 in 2021 where a smartphone user will be paying Rs 245 and a feature phone user will be paying Rs 112, the report said.

According to CLSA, Jio has a large subscriber base as compared to the other arm of its parent company Reliance Retail which presents the companies with large potential for cross-selling which will aid customer retention.

CLSA further stated that Jio may use third-party advertising, promotions and original content on its content apps to monetise its big customer base. Reliance Industries can reap benefits of the synergy driven by the launch of its telecom services.

To monetize the telecom network, Jio may have a plan with four key steps which start from gradually raising Arpus from its smartphone users, then ramping-up its 4G feature phone users, followed by launch of home-broadband/FTTx and then moving on to starting its enterprise solutions to further monetise its wide optic fibre network, CLSA explained.

Recently, Jio also acquired spectrum and other assets from Reliance Communications (RCom) which could potentially be higher than Bharti Airtel and the new company formed post Idea and Vodafone merger.