Jio To Launch Budget Laptop: Jio, the Mukesh Ambani-led telecommunications conglomerate has partnered with global giants Qualcomm and Microsoft to launch budget laptops known as ‘JioBook’. Reliance Jio will launch the budget laptop priced at Rs 15,000 with an embedded 4G sim card, aiming to replicate the success of its low-cost ‘JioPhone’ in India’s highly price-sensitive market, said a report by Reuters.Also Read – RBI’s Next Repo Rate Hike Expected To Be 35 Bps To 6.25%
The laptop will be available to enterprise customers such as schools and government institutes from this month, with a consumer launch anticipated within the next three months, the Reuters report said, quoting sources. “This will be as big as JioPhone,” one of the sources with direct knowledge of the matter told Reuters. Since its launch late last year, the handset has been India’s top-selling sub-$100 smartphone, accounting for a fifth of the market over the last three quarters, according to Counterpoint. A 5G enabled version of JioPhone will soon enter the markets. Also Read – 2 Daughters, Wife Die Of Burn Injuries As Man Sets House On Fire In Maharashtra's Thane
WHAT DO WE KNOW ABOUT JIOBOOK SO FAR?
- The JioBook will be produced locally by contract manufacturer Flex with Jio aiming to sell “hundreds of thousands” of units by March.
- The laptop will run Jio’s own JioOS operating system and apps can be downloaded from the JioStore.
- Jio is also pitching the laptop as an alternative to tablets for out of the office corporate employees.
- As Jio has partnered with Qualcomm and Microsoft, the former will power the computing chips based on technology from Arm Ltd and the Windows OS maker will provide support for some applications.
Overall PC shipments in India stood at 14.8 million units last year, led by HP, Dell and Lenovo, according to research firm IDC. The launch of the JioBook will extend the total addressable laptop market segment by at least 15%, Counterpoint analyst Tarun Pathak told Reuters. Also Read – Kia EV6 GT To Launch As High-Performance Electric Model In India
Jio, which raised around $22 billion from global investors such as KKR & Co Inc and Silver Lake in 2020, is credited with disrupting the world’s no. 2 mobile market when it launched cheap 4G data plans and free voice services in 2016, and later the 4G smartphone at a cost of just $81.