As reported earlier, Reliance Jio will soon come up with two VoLTE-enabled feature phones priced at Rs 999 and Rs 1500 respectively. 
For manufacturing these feature phones, Reliance Jio is said to be working with Lava International and Chinese original equipment and initially these phones might come with the branding of both Lava and Reliance Jio. These feature phones are touted to come with keypad, front and rear-facing camera and will come running on Android operating system. On top of this, they are also likely to come with Jio’s App network such as Jio Chat, Live TV and video on demand.
As of now, Reliance Jio is the only telecom operator who offers free calls over VoLTE (Voice over LTE) technology and has already attracted about 25 million customers since its commercial launch which took place on September 5th, 2016. The company is said to be targeting 100 million soon which would be still a lot less than Airtel’s 260 million users. To achieve this even bigger number, Reliance Jio has to enter feature phone market.
In India, about 65% of the total 1 billion mobile users are of feature phones and as per Economic Times, the cheapest 4G smartphone today would cost Rs 3,000.
Well, if Reliance Jio manages to launch the highly anticipated feature phones, the smartphone market, especially in a country like India, is expected to struggle. Researchers and Analysts have further gone on and warned the various smartphone manufacturers in India and expects a downward trend for the smartphone market in the country. Ever since its launch in India, VoLTE has become the new favourite technology for calling and with the launch of these extremely cheap feature phones, the growth of VoLTE phones in the market is tipped to grow a lot.