Reliance Jio in talks with Flex, UTL for ultra-low cost smartphone

If discussions fructify, smartphone would be made at Indian plants

Reliance Jio is in talks with Singapore-based electronics company, Flex, and home-grown UTL Neolnycs (makers of Karbonn mobile phones), amongst oth­ers, to make them contract manufacturers for its new, ultra-low cost android smart phone named Jio Next, acco­rding to sources. 

Mukesh Ambani in his AGM speech recently, anno­unced that the smart phone would be launched on Sept­ember 10. If the discussions with Flex and UTL Neolnycs fructify, the phones would be made in India, as both the firms have plants in various locations in the country.

A Flex spokesperson decli­ned to comment on the mat­ter, and a query to Sudhir Has­ija, chairman of UTL, did not elicit any response. A Reliance Jio spokesperson also chose not to comment.

Jio Next, expected to be priced below Rs 5,000, is a key element of the company’s am­b­­itious plan to garner over 500 million customers in the country. Jio has developed the 4G sm­art phone jointly with Go­ogle (which has also taken an equity stake in Jio Plat­fo­rms) on an Android platform which has been specially deve­loped for the purpose. 

The phone will come with numerous features, including language and translation capabilities, a great camera, support for the latest Android updates, automatic read-aloud of scre­en text, and augmented reality filters. 

The phone is expected to enable the over 120 million Jio 4G feature phone users to upgrade to an advanced 4G smart phone and get the benefit of bundled data offers.  It could also incentivise the 400 million plus customers of rival mobile companies (mostly with Vodafone-Idea) to move directly from 2G to 4G, thanks to a possible bundled phone offering. A key bottleneck for 2G customers has been the high cost of handset that a shift to 4G would entail. The Jio Next phone provides a solution to this problem. Competitors like Bharti Airtel and Vodafone-Idea have so far kept away from subsidising phones, saying that it is not a viable proposition.  

UTL is one of the five ho­me-grown players which had applied and is eligible under the government’s production-linked incentive scheme for mobile devices. These “global champions” will get incentives of 4 per cent to 6 per cent on their production value, provided they meet the criterion of investment and production each year. The company, whi­ch has plants in Noida, Tiru­pati and Bawal in Hary­ana, had said last year that it would hit a capacity of 3.3 million units per month by 2021. 

It has also said that apart from manufacturing its own brand Karbonn, it would also look at contract manufacturing opportunities. UTL manufactures set top boxes for Jio.  

Flex, too, has many manufacturing units in the country, including at Sriper­umb­udur, Poonamalle, Walaja­bad in Tamil Nadu and Sri City in Andhra Pradesh. It also makes Jio 4G feature phones.