Faisal Kawoosa, principal analyst for Telecoms at CMR, says the huge potential of voice business is forcing Reliance Jio Infocomm to introduce budget feature phone with VoLTE services.

In fact, 83 percent of the 4G smartphones shipped during the third quarter of 2016 have supported VoLTE.

For some analysts, feature phones with VoLTE is an attempt by Reliance Jio to take on Indian telecom operators such as Bharti Airtel, Vodafone India and Idea Cellular. Top telecom operators rely on voice business for 70-80 percent of their annual revenue. If Reliance Jio is able to bring a high quality feature phone, it can create leadership in the Indian rural markets.

“While the ecosystem is working on to make data services affordable, accessible and meaningful for the subscribers, the majority is still looking for a reliable voice communications. This is forcing even a future ready network like Jio to work on innovative models of launching Volte-enabled 4G feature phones to tap the voice potential,” said Faisal Kawoosa, principal analyst for Telecoms at CMR.

Samsung leads 4G smartphones

CMR’s India Monthly Mobile Handset Market Review Report for 3Q 2016 has revealed Samsung’s leadership position in the Indian 4G smartphone space.

India shipped 197.5 million mobile handsets, of which 78.4 million were alone shipped during the third quarter of the calendar year.

The number of mobile handsets shipped will be 265 million by the year end, of which 116 million would be smartphones.

Q3 facts

66 percent of the phones in Q3 were Made in India. Every second 4G Smartphone shipped during Q3 2016, using 3rd party chipset solution had a Qualcomm chipset.

137 brands shipped mobile phones, of which 69 shipped smartphones. Over 98 percent of the smartphones used Google’s Android OS with more than 25 percent preloaded with Android 6 (Marshmallow).