Telecom Diary: Airtel, Jio race to shift feature phone users to smartphones

The race has begun to shift the next 100 million feature users to smartphones with the launch of JioPhone Next. But will the latest smartphone from the stable of Jio live up to its hype and create disruption in the market?

The market is abuzz with the launch of the JioPhone Next in partnership with Google. The 4G phone that went into sale from Diwali is available for an upfront payment of Rs 1,999 (excluding processing fee) with balance payable in monthly instalments over 18/24 months.

The first target would be Airtel and Vodafone Idea’s 2G million user base at around 250 million which accounts for 22-25 % of their revenues.