Reliance Jio in talks for exclusive right to sell Xiaomi’s TVs and smartphones

Reliance Jio Infocomm and Xiaomi are discussing a long-tern relationship, much like the one it has with Apple to sell the Chinese brand's televisions and smartphones exclusively through the Jio retail network and the Reliance Digital chain of stores, according to two senior industry executives, The Economic Times reported.

An arrangement to provide Xiaomi's B2B products like smart point-of-sales devices to Jio retailers to digitise the supply chain is also being discussed. The two companies will also explore bringing more products of the Chinese company into the Indian market, the executives said.

The proposed deal comes after Xiaomi India made a regulatory filing, announcing its intension to enter products beyond smartphones, including for the B2B segment, in this market.

"Senior executives at Xiaomi India and Reliance Jio have met several times in the last few weeks," said one of the executives, report said.

"While the Xiaomi-Reliance relationship will start with the B2B smart point-of-sales devices whereby the latter is going to place an order for around 1 million units, both are keen to expand the relationship into consumer devices", according to the report.

Meanwhile, according to a report by Bank of America Merrill Lynch, mobile data rates will be down to as low as Rs 2.7 per GB with Reliance Jio announcing extra 500 MB data for its users of select plans as part of 'Republic Day offer'.

''It is very logical to assume that, after Jio's strong signalling at its analyst day, Airtel knew that Jio would follow up on any tariff cut. Despite this, Airtel launched these new offers. We believe that it is investing heavily to build a strong network that can sustain high traffic. We now see the market moving to 1.5GB per day plans from 1GB per day.

We find smaller telcos vulnerable in this ''network capacity war,'' the report said.

According to a Credit Suisse report in over the last three weeks, effective tariff, measured as Rs per GB daily allowance, would have come down by 40-50 per cent.

''In our earlier note, we had highlighted our concern that the Rs 149 plan could become the de facto ceiling on monthly spend for customers (thus limiting average revenue per user).

This was also alluded to by Bharti Airtel management on their earnings call that there is some room for ARPUs to decline further,'' Credit Suisse report said.