Reliance 4G JioPhone hit by glitches in China, set to become ‘Made in India’ gadget

Reliance Jio's ultra-affordable smart feature phone 'JioPhone' is all set to become a 'Made in India' device. Reportedly, Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Jio Infocomm has planned to shift the production of its much-hyped 4G feature phones to India. The step has been taken to overcome the supply related issues at its Chinese vendor's facility, Mint reported. Going by the reports, Ambani has already brought a vendor in Chennai on board to make its flagship phone. However, the name of the vendor hasn't been disclosed as yet. The initial batch of 6 million handsets were produced in China's Jio unit. In the second phase, Jio 4G feature phone demand has spiked to 10 million devices and the manufacturing for the same has already been started in Chennai.

The report further adds that Jio might miss its target of achieving sales of 200 million phones by December 2018. The fulfillment team in China, responsible to get the devices manufactured, has not been able to deliver, the report further adds. Notably, at the time of the launch, Reliance Industries chairman Mukesh Ambani had announced that the company was "targeting to have 5 million Jio phones available every week" while in July, Ambani had said production of Jio phones in India would start in the last quarter of the year.

The first set of pre-booking for Reliance JioPhone started on August 24 and the window was closed on August 26. As per media reports, as many as six million handsets have been delivered so far. Citing the popularity of the device, other telecom companies too have joined the bandwagon with Bharti Airtel and Vodafone India announcing an affordable smartphone.

Hailed as the cheapest 4G smartphone, Reliance Jio has the traditional keypad design but brings some advanced features like support to VoLTE, advanced OS, and support for JIO apps. The Reliance JioPhone is powered by a 1.2GHz Dual-Core processor coupled with a 512MB of RAM and Mali-400 graphics engine.

Source: Reliance 4G JioPhone hit by glitches in China, set to become 'Made in India' gadget