The pace of customer addition at Reliance Jio Infocom has slowed after it started charging for its services.
The company, which garnered more than 100 million subscribers in 170 days, drew in 30 million subscribers over the last 195 days, according to data from regulator TRAI.Reliance Jio added about 67 lakh subscribers in the last two months to cross 130 million subscribers, averaging 1.11 lakh subscribers a day, it’s slowest since the launch. At its peak, Reliance Jio netted 2.02 crore subscribers in December 2016, averaging 6.54 lakh subscribers a day. Analysts said Reliance Jio’s plans to introduce a feature phone on a refundable security deposit of ₹1,500, may be a game changer and could help the firm cross 200 million subscribers by March 2018.
As on June 30, Reliance Jio had cornered 10.39% in market share, making it the fourth-largest in subscriber base after Bharti Airtel with 23.65%, Vodafone India with 17.86% and Idea Cellular with 16.54%.
Once the ongoing consolidation in the industry is complete, Reliance Jio is likely to be amongst the top three players after the Vodafone-Idea combine (408 million subscribers) and Bharti Airtel-Telenor (327 million subscribers). Reliance Jio with 130 million subscribers is likely to overtake the new entity Aircom with 176 million subscribers by the end of this fiscal.
“Jio should cross 200 million subscribers in the next 8-10 months. The pace of addition may have reduced in the recent months but the company is expected to add a majority of the subscribers from the Jio Phone service starting later this month,” according to Naveen Kulkarni, co-head, Research, Phillip Capital.