The Reliance Jio preview offer will provide unlimited data, voice, SMS and entertainment services for free on select Apple iPhone units.
Earlier this week Reliance Jio kicked off its Preview Offer to select Samsung Galaxy smartphones. Now the carrier is planning to offer the same to select Apple iPhone users. The offer is likely to be announced next week.
Reliance Jio will extend the offer to users of VoLTE enabled iPhones, which includes the iPhone 6, iPhone 6s, iPhone 6 Plus, iPhone 6s Plus and iPhone SE. The offer will include unlimited voice calls, SMS, data and entertainment services that includes live TV streaming, video on demand and music on demand, which would be free for three months.
To avail the offer, iPhone users will have to install the My Jio app and generate a bar code to get a Reliance Jio SIM card. This bar code would be required while filling the CAF form.
Apple CEO Tim Cook had met Reliance Jio’s top leadership during his visit to India earlier this year. Reliance Jio is the only carrier in India to offer VoLTE services. Sources tell BGR India that Apple and Samsung won’t be the only handset partners for Reliance Jio. The company has already distributed testing SIM cards to most brands, which are already launching VoLTE smartphones. Most of these brands are also likely get the preview offer in the coming weeks.
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Reliance Jio is reportedly planning to finally launch its commercial services in August 15. However, it is possible that there might be some further delay. The carrier already has over 1.5 million subscribers by the virtue of its preview offer, which initially included only its employees and their families. It then extended the same offer to anyone who bought a Reliance Digital LYF smartphone.
Reliance Communications (RCom), owed by younger brother Anil Ambani, piggybacked on Reliance Jio’s network to migrate its CDMA users to 4G. RCom and Reliance Jio have a spectrum sharing agreement.
With the inclusion of Samsung Galaxy smartphones and Apple iPhone, we can only expect Reliance Jio’s subscriber base to grow rapidly even before it launches its services commercially. The masterstroke in the strategy is that it doesn’t require one to buy a new smartphone and most of these users are likely to be high ARPU customers for carriers like Airtel and Vodafone, among others.