Indian Telecom News Digest (21-Mar-10)

Devices Motorola’s Android phones are coming to India. Hope they make a mark again! After the Yuva series, they completely went silent in India. Finally, iPhone 3GS is coming to India through Airtel – while the US would get the next version in a few months! Indian consumers would not take it seriously unless there is a subsidy! There have been rumors about other operators, pricing etc too. Hope at least Google would get its pricing for Nexus One right for India. Continuing with the trend of operator bundling for special devices, Aircel brings in INQ & Peek – that are pure social networking & emailing devices. In my humble opinion, there is negligible market for such devices in India. Aircel might focus on making better ads with Dhoni than these! After a lull, LG is back with a new device and an awful TV ad with their new brand ambassadors. I have a doubt – most phone manufacturers end up promoting Google, Facebook, eBay etc through their advertisements, no? From the local players, there are scores of devices being launched every day but the loudest campaign has been from Micromax with their ‘gaming’ device . They have a super-star but have chosen to show him in the worst possible way in the TVC Bling Telecom is the latest player with huge ambitions – can we see a ‘Movil Man of the Match’ in IPL next year? But see local players are coming up with innovations like using AAA batteries for charging, so we may actually have great brands coming out of India. NID ( National Institute of Design ) is making a no-frills mobile phone . IBM & some institution from Japan are collaborating on this. Let this not be another simputer! Applications/Services This is the season of Application Stores . After other operators, Vodafone too announced their store and claimed 10000 downloads. Airtel (that launched just a little earlier) claims to have had 2.5 m downloads in just 30 days. I just wonder why they call it the India’s “first” mobile application store while others like Aircel launched before them. Airtel has prestigious applications like WSJ India too in its kitty. But beyond the prestige, I doubt if it is of any use. The mass does not need WSJ. Not to be left out, Reliance also seems to have launched an application around social networking. Apart from operators and handset vendors, managed service providers and VAS players are not launching application stores. SMSGupShup also launched their App-Store with a lot of fanfare. I could not find much worthwhile (for me) in the first couple of days there. Here is a short Q&A with them. Hungama too has launched one . Infosys has a different approach to participate in this application store craze – through their Flypp platform. They are told to be tying up with as many as 9 telcos once their exclusivity with Aircel ends. Whatever the state of App-Store, individual applications that create a niche for themselves and more importantly bring in a service from the desktop seamlessly to the mobile might be the ones to succeed in the long term – like BookMyShow, Google Transit (not an application per se but still), BSE Sensex and BIGFlix . Airtel is also foraying into other service areas – like Mobile Bazaar – but we stop hearing about most of these soon after their launch. Remember, even Nokia launched a mobile bazaar service? However such services seem to be working even in the neighboring Bangladesh. Lots of talk is going around mHealth these days, the latest from Ericsson India – But unless the ‘patient unit’ becomes cheap or actually just their mobile phone itself, these might not become mainstream. They would only be for ‘rich’ and ‘chronically’ ill patients. One more Airtel service – Mobile Voice Blogging ! Unless you have several Amitabh Bachchans offering their content there everyday, these will not work. Boy, why am I saying ‘it will not work’ for everything? This week (rather, month) has a lot of Airtel services covered – here is one more – the one for Bangalore Police . I will not crib about this – just pray I never get to see it working Nokia is going to launch ‘ music service’ in India – I thought it already existed – Why are they launching it again May be some minor change or something? One more non-GPRS email service – Blacmail – Ha, what a name!! Internet Radios on phones seems to be the next big thing (or fad?). While OnMobile did a deal with BIGFM in India, Geodesic has crossed the shores to launch Mundu Radio in Sri Lanka . Operators Quickies bharti board OK-s 9 billion offer for Zain – Note to Zain’s CEO: See what happened to MTN CEO. Videocon has launched services (in Coimbatore) – They have a 100 cities in 100 days plan! Reliance crosses 100m subscribers. Vodafone (India alone) is expected to follow that soon S-Tel’s troubles with their 2G spectrum continues – Their services were shut down , they questioned it and even met up with the wrong man who might actually lose his job soon Vodafone claims that the spectrum charges are biased towards dual technology operators Uninor would be in half of India by end of this year . They seem to have developed a special interest in rural areas. Idea Cellular has started charging for customer care calls – wow, that is a bold move! More so, since this comes after Tata Tele said they will compensate for poor customer care ! Three Indian operators (Aircel, Loop & Idea) are supposed to be on the radar of Vivendi, an European operator with plans to enter India. Voice & Data feels that the best way to manage the limited available spectrum is to merge or lose out. Regulation Thankfully, the 3G & BWA auction have reached the next step ! There are 9 bidders for 3G and 11 for BWA. The surprise bidder for BWA is Qualcomm who plan to bring in LTE (considered 4G) to India. I will be surprised (but welcome it) if India really does this – The article refers to it as anti-Pakistan but I don’t think it is. It is just a note of caution. In spite of a lot of hope and approvals , MNP has been postponed again – Okay, you will read about MNP here again only after it is launched. I am bored. The Union Budget seems to have introduced a tax for all paid software downloads – well it already is a pain to get customers to pay for apps, on top of it, such taxes would cause more trouble! Miscellaneous GSM subscribers grew by 13m in Feb-2010 with Vodafone leading the pack! Innovations like daily plans notwithstanding, guess DoCoMo finally gave in. Read this article on the perils of taking all these statistics at face value. You might know that IPL content is being strictly monitored and every bit of it is being monetized (even your casual glare at a cheerleader could be charged!) – Here are the people who hold rights for the mobile delivery. Smartphone apps need to have a separate license, oh my God. After several comics in mobile phones, Archies too is coming soon ! The readiness of Indians to pay for digital content is quite high according to a recent survey. It is very difficult for me to believe it.

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Indian Telecom News Digest (21-Mar-10)

Indian Telecom News Digest (21-Mar-10)

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