Reliance offers referral program to bolster Jio 4G

Reliance 4G smartphone
Reliance Industries (RIL) has unveiled a referral program to employees who can offer Jio 4G services experience to 10 select friends.

“We give you the opportunity to extend this digital life experience with your 10 friends by inviting them to an exclusive Jio preview offer powered by LYF smartphone,” said a mail to the employees.

“Simply with your invitation, your friends will be entitled to avail the below offer on the purchase of any LYF smartphone brought to you by Reliance Retail. Experience the Jio preview offer while the Jio network is getting tested on LYF Smartphone.”

The special marketing offer from RIL comes with 90 days of unlimited access to high-definition voice and video, high-speed data and SMS. This apart, it also comes with access to 10 Jio apps, including its chat, video in demand, music, news, cloud back-up and even one for personal security.

Reliance Retail is selling the LYF smartphones, which support 4G networks, at between Rs 5,490 and Rs 19,399.

Reliance offered the Jio 4G SIM cards to Reliance employees, post its beta launch in December last year, IANS reports.

Recently, Morgan Stanley forecast that led by local players notably LYF, India will overtake the US as the second-largest smartphone market next year. “Reliance Industries is our play on the rising tide. In near term, many players should benefit from 4G smartphone and network proliferation.”

Morgan Stanley says Jio launched its own handset brand LYF that could bundle with SIMs and its voice and data plans. This could be disruptive to the 4G market and expect Jio to gain 30 million subscribers in 2016 and 60 million in 2017.

Expecting Reliance Jio to launch its 4G services over the next 3-9 months after an investment to date of over $19 billion, Morgan Stanley expects the retail-to-refining major to log revenues of $1 billion from the telecom business this financial year.

Already, more than 50 percent of smartphones shipped are LTE-enabled. Currently more than 45 million 4G handsets are estimated to be in the market out of 250 million smartphones, said Morgan Stanley.