Reliance Industries Limited will be holding its 45th Annual General Meeting or AGM today. While this is a big event for India Inc. in general, this time around, the Indian tech industry is also going to keep track of the developments at the event, with bated breath.
Ever since RIL’s Jio announced that they would be getting into mobile device hardware a few years back, people have been anticipating a major move from the telecommunications giant, that would disrupt the handset market just as it did with the service market.
We take a look at a few things that most tech enthusiasts and industry analysts expect that RIL will be announcing at this year’s RIL AGM
Jio 5G Services
This one is kind of obvious. After emerging as the highest bidder in the recently concluded 5G spectrum auction and having bought the highest number of bandwidth and circles across the country, Reliance Jio Infocomm will be announcing their 5G services, and possibly the pricing of their 5G services as well. The services are expected to go live in October when India officially launches its own 5G networks.
Jio 5G Smartphone
This was a long time coming. Right after Jio had the JioPhone Next, their 4G ready smartphones, experts had claimed that it wouldn’t be long before they forrayed into 5G smartphones. Now that Jio is ready to launch their 5G services as well, they are also going to launch their first 5G smartphone. The device is likely to come with a 6.5-inch HD+ IPS LCD display. The Jio 5G Smartphone will be running on Pragati OS, a custom operating system that Jio has developed in partnership with Google, and will cost around Rs 12,000.
JioBook Laptop
Rumours around the Jiobook laptop started going around in 2018. Like most Jio offerings from Jio, the Jiobook is going to be an affordable thin and light notebook. A few months back, it got the BIS certification and even appeared on Geekbench. It will be powered by an ARM processor, have its own OS, and will come preloaded with apps like JioStore, JioMeet, JioPages, Microsoft Teams, Microsoft Edge and Office. The pricing should be around Rs 30,000.
Giga Factory for clean energy
RIL has planned to invest heavily in clean and green energy in the next decade. In 2020, RIL had had announced a 15-year commitment to become net carbon zero by 2035. Last year, Reliance announced that they would build 4 Giga Factories for Rs 60,000 crore and invest another Rs 15,000 crore in clean energy. This year, we might get to see an update on one of the Giga Factories.
JioTag
Although we have seen some pieces of this in the wild, the Jio Tag was never officially launched for the masses. This year Jio might just change that. The JioTag is India’s answer to the Apple AirTag. The Jio Tag will basically be a tracking device that will work similarly to how the AirTag works but will be substantially cheaper. While a singly AirTag cost about Rs 3,200, the JioTag is expected to cost about Rs 7,00 or even less.
(Disclosure – Reliance Industries Ltd. is the sole beneficiary of Independent Media Trust which controls Network18 Media & Investments Ltd.)
