News Digest – Week Ending 28/Mar/2010

Devices Last week, we mentioned about Motorola’s plan to comeback. This week, it is about Sony Ericsson – They have launched 5 new models and seem to have a plan in place for India, apart from having Kareena, that is! Good to know, but I am a bit pessimistic on them. Along with Airtel , Vodafone would also offer iPhone 3GS – These were the only people to offer the earlier version of iPhone also. Applications/Services (image courtesy: Medianama) Emantas has launched a ‘ mobile education program ’ – targeting the US market and planning to target universities in India later. Hopefully they will target rural and BoP later – they talk about Indian language support also. I guess this might be a better model – to target high end users first, make money and then slowly target the BoP where profitability might take a lot of time. The technology & delivery mechanisms might also mature by then. The next applications store for India is from – Spice . Some clues on what Google thinks about application stores in India can be found here . BTW, middle India seems to be the top users of the application stores. One more Indic Language platform – with support for fonts, rendering, transliteration, all put together – Reverie Technologies ! There seems to be no trials available to check!! Mobifusion has introduced an eBook reader application for several platforms – They do not seem to have enough content partners though. You have several applications / usage scenarios based on NFC but crib that not enough NFC handsets are available? Tyfone and FirstData may have answers for you. I am impressed – hope it comes live soon! Operators I guess it is time for the RBI to introduce new currency at either ends – While high inflation makes the case for a currency to be more than a “rupee”, the telecom tariffs make the case for having currency less than a ‘paisa’. Well, Videocon , the newest mobile operator is going to have sub-1-paisa plans. So what if the spectrum charges keep increasing (though TDSAT has stayed it) and it takes years to break-even (like MTS), what operators look for now is subscriber-additions! Videocon says that they know marketing and technology can be bought – look like ardent disciples of Peter Drucker who told that the main function of a company is marketing! (though his definition of marketing does not mean marketing communications / advertising alone!). The list of their VAS can be seen here – “Call me back” looks interesting. 3G seems to be slowing getting popular – BSNL’s trends show that – While the first few months had only a few thousand subscribers, expansion of 3G service to tier-2 towns & lowering the price barrier seem to have done the trick. They have more than a million 3G customers now. There is one company that claims the Indian market is not ready for 3G – Uninor . BTW, The eligible participants for 3G/BWA auctions will be known by 29-March (tomorrow) – Let the (auction) games begin! Approvals from Zain have also come for the Bharti-Zain deal. Bharti board has already approved it and claim to have tied $8.3b for the acquisition – SBI is giving them $1.5b loan. I thought Virgin mobile was one of the mediocre operators with modest subscribers – but looks like India is their second largest market . May be, it just shows the size of the market our country holds. Regulation The rapid expansion seen in the mobile industry can become questionable if the Government does not approve operators to purchase equipment fast – I thought it was only for the Chinese vendors but it looks like the rule applies to all equipment vendors. The Government seems to be working on an idea to mandate all cell towers to be power by solar power. Could become another reason to stop growth. Miscellaneous I have long been wondering about what kind of service ‘ Roamware’ provides – this article has some answers . They seem to be brokers between operators in multiple countries who may not have a direct billing relationship with each other. There cannot be any news item / discussion without IPL – so here it is: The statistics of mobile phone viewing of IPL are available here . As with everything else about IPL, this too is a success. I am just afraid IPL is bloating into a big bubble. A research report about Indian users’ mobile habits – voice calls, messaging & Internet can be seen here . You have heard/read about celebrity chats – MTS brought in Putin (yes the Russian prime minister) to launch their webcast. Some good insights about launching a mobile payment service (or any other mobile service) can be seen from the experience of GrameenPhone in Bangladesh.

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News Digest – Week Ending 28/Mar/2010

News Digest – Week Ending 28/Mar/2010

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