Kolkata: Bharti Airtel<\/a> appears to be better placed than Reliance Jio<\/a> to grab Vodafone Idea<\/a>’s (Vi) feature phone users<\/a> – who make up nearly 56% of the telco's 271 million user base -- and boost revenue share in coming months, said analysts.
This, they said, is since Vi’s feature phone users won’t have to burn any extra cash on a 4G handset to switch to Airtel, which they would have to spend for migrating to a 4G-only network like Jio’s.
“Vi has been losing customers in the feature phone segment, and Airtel is better placed than Jio to grab incremental market share as Vi’s 2G customers can migrate to Bharti at no additional investment,” Goldman Sachs said in a report.
Vi’s user base has plunged nearly 34% -- from around 408 million at the time of the merger in August 2018 – amid continuing concerns around network quality and coverage vis-a-via, Jio and Airtel.
Analysts said that the slowing down of user additions in the September quarter is likely to deter Reliance Jio from hiking tariffs. In such a scenario, they foresee more customer losses and a possible acceleration in Vi’s market share erosion in favour of Airtel and Jio. Jio added 7.3 million net users -- compared to Airtel’s near 14 million -- which the telco attributed to the impact of Covid-19 on the recharge cycles of the migrant population.
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