Semiconductor shortage sees JioPhone Next release pushed back to Diwali

Jio and Google have announced the JioPhone Next will not be seen until November.

“Both companies have begun testing JioPhone Next with a limited set of users for further refinement and are actively working to make it available more widely in time for the Diwali festive season,” the companies said in a statement.

“This additional time will also help mitigate the current industry-wide, global semiconductor shortages.”

The device was announced in June, and will have features such as automatic read-aloud and language translation of on-screen text, and a camera with “India-centric filters”.

As late as the end of August, Indian media was expecting the phone to be on sale this month.

No formal announcement of the specifications of the phone has been made, but it is expected to have a Snapdragon 215 and run Android 11 Go.

In its most recent set of financial results, Jio Platforms completed its fiscal year to March 31 with ₹12,537 crore in net profit, around $1.7 billion, from revenue of ₹86,493 crore, or $11.8 billion.

As of the end of March, the Indian telco said it had a customer base of 426 million, which represented a net increase of 38 million over the preceding 12 months, with gross additions sitting at 99.3 million. Across the year, its customers had consumed 29% more data, taking its yearly total to 62.5 exabytes of data.

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