More than half of the respondents are likely to choose Reliance Jio, says Counterpoint

There is no doubt that Reliance Jio has shaken the whole telecom industry and now a new survey conducted by Counterpoint research says that users are looking to upgrade to a phone with 4G LTE capability and VoLTE ready mainly driven by Reliance Jio's VoLTE-only network and consumers' high intention to switch providers to Jio.

The survey said that more than half of the respondents are likely to choose Reliance Jio over any other operator for their new connection or porting from the existing one. While one fourth of the respondents is likely to consider Bharti Airtel.

According to Associate Director - Tarun Pathak, "the Jio-fication of modern mobile consumers is happening. Aggressive 4G offerings from free trials to one of world's lowest priced 4G data plans bundled with a bouquet of applications and content services, Jio has driven the purchase intention strongly in its favor in just six months. Almost one in three respondents have the Jio TV app installed on their device; only next to the default YouTube app which comes pre-installed on an Android device."

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He said "Jio has raced to more than 100 million subscribers and we are seeing an increasing affinity towards Jio's network as well as services. However, maintaining the quality of service (QoS) of Jio's network and offerings will be critical for Jio to sustain this momentum and stickiness as it rolls out its paid offerings."

The report also pointed that besides 4G VoLTE capability many users are looking for a phone with better memory, storage or battery capacity, driving an urgent desire to upgrade as smartphones become central to their lives.

Among other interesting finds from the survey - almost one in three respondents were considering phones with a fingerprint sensor and better front-facing 'selfie' cameras as key features in their next purchase.

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The survey also says that Seven out of ten respondents consider online stores as their preferred point of purchase and Flipkart are the most preferred online retail platform for buying a mobile phone.

According to Senior Analyst, Pavel Naiya, "Online retail platform competition is heating up. While Amazon is investing heavily in India, Flipkart has successfully secured $1.4 Billion in funding to secure its place as leading online channel. We expect ultimately there will be three dominant online sales channels. Paytm is currently in a minority position, but the strategic investment by Alibaba suggests it will grow in strength while Snapdeal fades."

Pavel Naiya adds, "With rising competition, these platforms need to create differential push and pull strategy.Firstly, by adopting an effective social commerce strategy and secondly investing in next generation technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) to utilize the huge data on online purchase patterns."