Reliance Jio is planning to enter the 4G smartphone scene in India as the company is close to launch its own 4G service in the country by the end of this year.
As per a new report from the Economic Times, Reliance Jio has approached smartphone makers to make 4G smartphones in India. The company is joining government’s ‘Make in India’ initiative that has already seen involvement from a large number of national and international smartphone makers. The report said that Reliance Jio will buy all the 4G handsets that are manufactured in India and is in talks with Micromax, Lava, Karbonn, Intex, and Lenovo and others to partner on this project. All the aforementioned handset makers have already started to manufacture smartphones in India.
Moving on, the report added that Reliance Jio has signed deals with Chinese handset makers Huawei, ZTE, Alcatel OneTouch (TCL Communications), CK-Telecom and Beijing Tianyu Communication Equipment-owned K-Touch. Under this partnership, the company will also sell 4G dongles, routers, smartphones and other equipment in the country.
The company will procure handsets manufactured by these smartphone makers and sell under the ReConnect brand. Smartphones sold under the ReConnect brand will be priced between Rs 4,000- Rs 25,000. Finally, the report revealed that Jio has already placed an order for around five million smartphones with these vendors. 4G smartphones have become the buzz word in India with smartphone makers rolling out budget devices compatible with the latest technology. The sub Rs 10,000 category is flooding with 4G enable handsets in India and the market will only heat up with launch of these new phones,