Reliance’s JioPhone to take the wind out of cable & DTH players’ sails?

Mukesh Ambani, Chairman, Reliance Industries, unveiled the JioPhone at the company’s AGM in Mumbai today and the launch seems to have caused quite a flutter in the cable and DTH industry. 

The phone comes along with the Jio App, which offers most of the Indian TV channels. What’s more, the JioPhone also features a mobile-to-TV cable through which the phone can be plugged to any television set, thus, the device can also act as a set top box. Jio TV cable has been priced at Rs 309. 

While introducing the features of the JioPhone, Ambani in his AGM address said, “Many JioPhone users might like to view their favourite content such as live TV, movies, education on the big screen of their television sets... Our young Jio engineers have created an innovation to help them – a special and affordable ‘JioPhone TV cable’ that connects JioPhone with any TV, not just a smart TV, so that all JioPhone users can enjoy viewing on the big screen of their existing television sets.” 

Along with this accessory, users can opt for the existing Jio Dhan Dhan Dhan 309 pack that would allow users to watch almost 3-4 hours of videos daily, of their choice, on a large screen.

As was the case during the launch of the Jio service, where 4G data was offered to customers for free, the JioPhone has been priced at zero rupees. This disruptive pricing is expected to attract almost 50 crore feature phone users in India for whom smartphones are an expensive proposition. 

While the long term implications for the cable and DTH industry will be known over the next few months, the immediate impact was seen in the share prices of some of the cable and DTH operators witnessing a fall. These included: Bharti Airtel (down 4 per cent), Dish TV (down 8.5 per cent), Sun TV (down 4.2 per cent), Den Networks (down 2.46 per cent), Hathway Cable (down 5 per cent), and GTPL Hathway (down 2 per cent).

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