Reliance Jio leads featurephone segment during Q4 2017

According to a new report by research firm Counterpoint, Mukesh Ambani owned Reliance Jio captured a 26 percent share of the feature phone segment in just one quarter with its compelling value proposition compared to the normal 2G feature phones.

Tarun Pathak, Associate Director at Counterpoint Research said, "We expect the 4G feature phone segment will be a 200 million unit opportunity by volume, over the next five years as the hundreds of millions of current feature phone users in India are likely to upgrade to VoLTE handsets. While Jiophone saw healthy sell-in during 4Q, we believe the operator exited the quarter with some inventory, which could affect its share in coming quarters."

The report said that India's overall mobile phone shipments grew 37 percent and smartphone shipments grew 12 percent with feature phones growing an astonishing 55 percent during 4Q 2017 and despite India's seasonal peak normally being pre-Diwali shipments in the third quarter, the market set a volume shipment record in the fourth quarter for the first time.

Research Analyst Karn Chauhan at Counterpoint Research said, "This surprising annual growth can be attributed to higher demand for smartphones and more so for feature phones. The strong growth is also partly due to last year's weak quarter due to the impact of demonetization."

He said, "Feature phones have been driven by the disruptive entry of Jiophone, which expanded the feature phone segment. The quarter also saw new device launches and strong promotions from various brands looking to catalyze demand after Diwali."

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On the competitive landscape Tarun said, "The competitive landscape has changed significantly in the last year, with the rise of brands such as Xiaomi, OPPO, VIVO in the smartphone segment and players such as Reliance Jio, Nokia HMD and iTel in the feature phone segment - all able to disrupt the market with high-quality and attractively-priced offerings. During the second half, players such as Xiaomi was particularly disruptive with an aggressively-priced, broad portfolio taken to market with an effective channel expansion strategy. This helped Xiaomi to surpass the long-time market leader, Samsung, for the first time ever. This performance ended Samsung's six-year market dominance."