According to Reliance Industries’ annual report for the 2023-24 financial year, JioBharat phones capture 50 per cent of the marketshare in the sub-₹1,000 segment. 

This comes nearly one year after the launch of the JioBharat phones that aim to bring 4G capabilities to the feature phone market.

Multiple iterations

Reliance has been launching multiple iterations of the “Jio Phone” over the years. Before refocusing their efforts on the JioBharat phones focusing on the feature phone segment, Jio had tried to break into the affordable smartphone category with the launch of the JioPhone Next, which saw limited success.

JioBharat phones went back to the feature phone segment, launching 4G-enabled phones with lite Jio apps. Last week, Jio introduced certain OTT apps as a prepaid feature to their phones. JioBharat partners with indigenous phone manufacturers to make these phones as part of their ‘Make in India’ endeavours. 

The report further noted that in FY24 Jio was granted 144 patents, across domains of 6G, 5G, AI-LLM, AI-Deep Learning, Big Data, Devices and internet of Things. With this, the cumulative count of patents granted till March 31, 2024, is 331.

In FY24, Jio’s subscriber base shot up to 481.8 million. According to the annual report, 108 million subscribers have already migrated to Jio’s True5G network. 

Jio also added that increasing 5G connectivity has led to the increase in data traffic. “Increasing mix of 5G and fixed broadband, and higher customer engagement have led to a 31 per cent year-on-year increase in overall data traffic to about 149 exabytes during FY24,” the report said.