Smartphone made by Google and India's Reliance Jio to be sold for about $87

FILE PHOTO: A woman walks past the logo of Google during an event in New Delhi, India, August 28, 2018. REUTERS/Adnan Abidi/File Photo

BENGALURU (Reuters) -India's Reliance Industries said on Friday the low-cost smartphone made by its Jio telecom business and Alphabet Inc's Google will be available in stores from this festive season of Diwali for 6,499 rupees ($86.81).

The smartphone will be available for an upfront price of 1,999 rupees and the rest can be paid via monthly instalments, Reliance said in a regulatory filing https://www.bseindia.com/xml-data/corpfiling/AttachLive/94ac3f7c-33d6-4479-a6f3-467a151e93cb.pdf.

The phone's pricing is expected to shake-up the lower end of India's smartphone market, the world's second biggest.

The phone will pose a major challenge to Chinese vendors such as Xiaomi and BBK Electronics, owner of the Realme, Oppo and Vivo brands, which currently dominate a $2 billion market for sub-$100 smartphones in India. https://reut.rs/3pPvhcI

Jio also aims to use the phone to poach 2G users from rivals Vodafone Idea Ltd and Bharti Airtel Ltd.

The Mumbai-based oil-to-telecoms conglomerate had last month delayed the launch of the smartphone till November owing to an industry-wide semiconductor shortage.

($1 = 74.8640 Indian rupees)

(Reporting by Anuron Kumar Mitra, Rama Venkat and Sankalp Phartiyal; Editing by Shinjini Ganguli)