Reliance Retail’s JioFi is the undisputed leader of data card market. It has achieved a market share of 91 percent. This was revealed by the recent research by CyberMedia Research (CMR). The report was published for Q2 2017.
This is surprising because it took just 11 months to conquer entire data card market in India. JiFi device costs Rs. 1999 and comes with Jio connectivity. It offers unlimited voice calls for free to new customers.
It not just acquired the market, it has also pushed the sales of data cards. In Q2 2017, the data cards’ shipments and orders increased by 16% and total 4 million units were shipped.
Narinder Kumar, the Analyst Industry Intelligence practice at CMR, said, “Jio’s MiFi devices (JioFi) also impacted home router market. However, we expect Mi-Fi’s to continue cannibalizing the entry level router market for few more quarters from now,”
Most of the users who adopted the data card for the first time and selected JioFi were from Tier 2/3 cities. These users ditched BSNL broadband to join Jio’s 4G revolution.
The report also confirmed that 3G data cards shipments also reduced by 61% in Q2, as compared to Q1. 4G data card accounted for 17% of the overall growth in data card market. People are selecting the high-speed data cards. So, data cards with a data speed of 150Mbps account for 91% overall orders. The 92% of the data cards shipped in Q2, 2017 were using Qualcomm chipsets in India.
If you compare the year on year growth, the data card market grew by 614% because of Jio’s entry.
ZTE and Alcatel are at a second and third place in data card market with 3% and 2% market share.
Are you using JioFi? Let us know in the comments.
