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Reliance Jio already displayed a few of its services at a technology festival at Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) in Mumbai. The company innovated on concepts like Catch-up TV where a user who is on the operator's Android powered set-top box will be able to access TV programming, which is seven days old.
Reliance Jio's biggest competitor, Airtel, already launched 4G services in all major circles. While it has marketed the high-speed connectivity, it is yet to devise plans to create demand around the speed, it is largely targeting enterprise customers.
The speeds that 4G can offer can be as high as 40 mbps, which is at least ten times higher than 3G speeds. The 3G market has expanded in the last one year, and many users are still trying to test and migrate to the speeds that the service offers. Internationally, 4G based-services are yet to pick up, and fewer users see the need for such high speeds, adding to fact that very few devices that adapt to the service are available in the market.
Jio's strategy of selling the service as opposed to speed is different, agree experts. However, the services that they are planning to offer might not create popular demand. “These services might not have much demand in India for 4G-like speeds,” said Mohammad Chowdhury, media and technology industry leader at PriceWaterhouseCoopers.
Alok Shende, principal analyst and co-founder of Ascentius Consulting agrees as well. “We cannot look just at the supply side, we have to look at the demand side as well,” he commented.
The TV connectivity that Jio plans to offer has a lot of competition. “The satellite and cable offerings available currently are very competitive. Subscribers would prefer to go for services that are offered by those in the domain, like a cable company which understands the broadcast business,” said Shende. Jio had tied-up with 160 TV channels, of which 16 are on high-definition mode. It also has 500 movies and 2,500 episodes of TV shows in its library, hoping to attract a large mass of TV viewers.
While the prices of these high-end services were not revealed, it is not the pricing of the services alone which will determine the success of Jio's offerings. Experts say that Jio is targeting a niche market which uses smartphones and would want to watch TV shows across devices.
Jio also showcased a series of healthcare products where wireless blood pressure machines and blood glucose machines can take store readings of patients regularly. The readings which will be stored on the cloud can be retrieved anytime, anywhere. “How many patients would be there who would want to do such regular check-ups?” questions Shende.
If Reliance Jio were to target the largesse, they will have to mass-market their products, before they bring in their revolutionary services. “The costs of 4G technology which is more efficient costs less than 3G, so that is an advantage. But the forthcoming spectrum sale will also auction 1,800 Mhz spectrum which could be used for 4G as well. So, there would other operators going some for similar services too,” said Chowdhury.
