There is growing competition to Reliance – Jio in the new 4G Feature Phone segment in India. The latest entrant being Micromax, with its Bharat 1 device. The vendor partnered with government owned telecom operator BSNL to take on Jio Phone. India dominates our latest Global LTE Feature Phone Forecast , from Emerging Device Strategy (EDS) Service.

Bharat 1 with a wholesale price of US$ 32 is set to be in the retail stores by October 20, 2017. The device to be bundled with unlimited voice calls and data, from the US$ 1.5 tariff plan from BSNL. The Dual Sim device supports 22 different languages and runs on a Qualcomm Snapdragon Chipset. Bharat 1 comes preloaded with BHIM UPI payment app and BSNL’s wallet app.

Bharat series, has been leading the revival of volumes for Micromax in the Smartphone Segment. Our close tracking of the Indian handset market, confirms to the local vendors taking heavy market share cuts, due to the intense competition from the Chinese. We expect more of the local vendors partnering with mobile operators in India, to offer partially subsidized devices in response to the launch of Jio phone and to take on the Chinese competition.