Jio Bharat feature phone to hurt Airtel more vs Vi: Jeferries

economictimes.indiatimes.com:

Reliance Jio’s 4G feature phone is expected to drive a higher market share loss among 2G users of Bharti Airtel as compared to Vodafone Idea, further delaying tariff hikes, analysts said. They added that attractive pricing and reasonable device quality will drive market share gains for Jio. “While Bharti's network is better than its other 2G peers, its dominant share in the feature-phone market will lead to higher subscriber losses. We expect Bharti to witness voice subscriber churn of 17 million by March 2026,” Jefferies said in a report. As per estimates, Airtel has over 130 million active 2G subscribers and around 100 million paying voice subscribers, implying a 40-50% share among the 250 million feature-phone market. Earlier this month, Jio had launched the Rs 999 internet enabled feature phone — Jio Bharat, with the aim to capture a majority of the 2G user base in the country. With attractive pricing, those feature phone users who are at the end of their device life, are likely to save 26% on their mobile spends. “This leads to an annual addressable market of 60-65 million users for Jio Bharat and we expect Reliance Jio to gain 55 million subscribers by March 2026,” the report said. Analysts further said that hefty network capacity additions along with Jio Bharat launch underscore the Mukesh Ambani-led company’s rising focus on subscriber gains and it did not bode well for tariff hikes. “Hence, we change our tariff hike assumptions of a 15% hike towards end CY23 to 20% hike in 2Q FY25, which leads to a 3-5% cut to our FY24-25 India mobile Arpu (average revenue per user) estimates,” the report added.

Reliance Jio unlikely to hike tariffs before FY25, ARPU may remain range-bound

Meanwhile,