Reliance-Jio is more likely to adhere to its DISRUPTIVE reputation, as it gears to launch the 4G Feature phone in the Indian market in Q3 2017. In our recent insight report, on this segment from the Emerging Device Strategy (EDS) Service, we forecast the global 4G Feature Phone sales to be driven by the Indian market.

While there have been several other vendors like Lava mobile who have been eying the segment with limited success. We expect a subsidised launch from Reliance-Jio’s as the major trigger for 4G feature phone segment to take off. The price disruption and scale that a major vendor like Reliance-Jio with strong financials could bring about is imperative for success in an overcrowded and hyper competitive Indian Feature Phone market.

The subsidized phones are likely to be launched bundled with a Reliance-Jio connection. Its 4G network launch in 2016 and the LYF smartphones have been equally disruptive. The growth of the latter in the last six quarters have been captured in our quarterly market share report on India, from the Handset Country Share Tracker (HCST) Service.