BENGALURU (Reuters) -India’s Reliance Industries said on Friday the low-cost smartphone made by its Jio telecom business and Alphabet Inc’s Google will be available in stores from this festive season of Diwali for 6,499 rupees ($86.81).
The smartphone will be available for an upfront price of 1,999 rupees and the rest can be paid via monthly instalments, Reliance said in a regulatory filing https://www.bseindia.com/xml-data/corpfiling/AttachLive/94ac3f7c-33d6-4479-a6f3-467a151e93cb.pdf.
The phone’s pricing is expected to shake-up the lower end of India’s smartphone market, the world’s second biggest.
The phone will pose a major challenge to Chinese vendors such as Xiaomi and BBK Electronics, owner of the Realme, Oppo and Vivo brands, which currently dominate a $2 billion market for sub-$100 smartphones in India. https://reut.rs/3pPvhcI
Jio also aims to use the phone to poach 2G users from rivals Vodafone Idea Ltd and Bharti Airtel Ltd.
The Mumbai-based oil-to-telecoms conglomerate had last month delayed the launch of the smartphone till November owing to an industry-wide semiconductor shortage.
($1 = 74.8640 Indian rupees)
(Reporting by Anuron Kumar Mitra, Rama Venkat and Sankalp Phartiyal; Editing by Shinjini Ganguli)
