Reliance Industries’ handset brand LYF has witnessed steep growth in its early days and its sale picked up further when Jio started testing its services. However, as per a research report of CMR, LYF devices are witnessing a decline. As per the CyberMedia Research (CMR) report, LYF may not remain a leading brand in the coming quarters.
“In the mobile phones, Samsung, Micromax and LYF are the three leaders with 41%, 8.62 % and 8.54% market shares, respectively. In tablets, Samsung held 40% market share, Apple was at second position with 30.79% market share and iBall was ranked number 3 with 8.3% share,” the CMR’s Quarterly India LTE Devices Report added.
Note that the research report is for second quarter of this year (July-Sept period). The report has not specified the reasons of the decline in LYF handsets’ sales. However, coincidentally Jio started inducting other handset brands in the Jio Preview program just around the same time. Before that Jio was offering SIMs only with LYF handsets or for employees of RIL.
Now post September 5, anyone with a 4G handset can get a Jio SIM and enjoy Jio’s Welcome Offer that entitles a range of freebies to the subscriber. Ofcourse you need to be a bit lucky to get a Jio SIM and activate that thereafter as the queues in front of Jio stores not getting shorter.
Commenting on the findings, Faisal Kawoosa, principal analyst for telecoms at CMR, said, “Now the equation is reversed. First, all handset vendors wanted to ride on the expected 4G wave. With services becoming live, it will be now more of a concern for operators, especially Jio (since it is a 4G only network) to actually see the ecosystem gets widened and encourage more and more handset players to come onboard and ramp up their shipments.”
“The biggest challenge for Jio would be to double the users actually having a 4G device in hand. We expect this year to end with around 125 million cumulative 4G devices and Jio would want this base to touch 250-300 million by 2017 end. Only then, it can expect some decent numbers (70-80 million) of subscribers on Jio services of this potential base by the end of 2017,” Faisal added.