“Jio wants to bring the device for less than Rs 5,000. When we scale up the sales, it can be priced in the range of Rs 2,500-3,000,” a company official told PTI. This would significantly improve the rate of 5G smartphone adoption in India. At present, 5G phones cost upward of Rs 25,000.
Jio 5G phone launch date is currently unknown, but we expect to see it sometime in 2021. A recent Bloomberg report claimed that Jio was working on launching Jio Android phones priced at Rs 4,000 in India in December. These phones are expected to support 4G only and the company is aiming to manufacture as many as 200 million smartphones over the next two years.
Jio has partnered with Google to bring out low-cost smartphones with a new and optimised version of Android OS after the latter invested Rs 33,737 crores for a 7.1 percent stakes in Jio platforms back in July. Jio is working on its own 5G network equipment and has asked the Department of Telecom to allocate spectrum for testing.