Reliance's Jio feature phone sales accelerate its subscriber base in rural area

Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance Jio’s market share growth has accelerated and climbed a notch higher to its competitors in recent months. The prime reason being the higher sales of its feature phone, which has led to an increase in its user base in rural areas.

Reliance is estimated to have sold close to 40 million Jio Phones in all. This has further increased its rural users market share, which is around 27 per cent currently largely owing to its 4G offering. This is expected to rise in the next quarter.

In the past few months, Jio has outshined its competitors in terms of adding subscribers.

In July, Reliance Jio alone added 11.8 million subscribers. Whereas Bharti Airtel and Vodafone-Idea together manage to add merely 9 lakh wireless subscribers. This quarter Jio added 28.7 million subscribers as against 26.5 million in the previous quarter.

In space of three months, Jio’s grabbed 19.6 per cent subscriber market share, going past figures of both Vodafone and Idea.

The growth impact has also reflected in shares, where its rivals Airtel and Vodafone witnessed the downfall of 6.2 per cent and 12.5 per cent, respectively, in value. Whereas Reliance just fell to merely 1.9 per cent.

In a year, it has gone way above its competitors, gaining about 34 per cent. The phenomenal growth is also the outcome of increased thrust on capital spend. In this year first quarter alone, Reliance has spent $2.5 billion.

Presently, Jio has 215 million subscribers. It aims to have 400 million customers by March 2020, including nearly 150 million Jio Phone users. Among many other things, Jio is also preparing to launch 5G by that time.