Bangalore based July Systems is the technology provider of the white-labeled, end-to-end managed cross-operator service which allows German consumers to try mobile games before buying on the portal Firstfun.tv.
The new service on Firstfun.TV is completely managed end-to-end by July Systems and is built entirely on July’s German mobile retailing infrastructure. July manages content sourcing and selection, service design and testing, as well as delivery and support. July’s foundation supports billing on all leading German mobile operators including Vodafone, O2, T-Mobile and debitel, allowing July to quickly deploy different types of cross-operator, cross-content mobile services for new customers and partners in Germany
CIOL reports that Reliance Infocomm’s second phase of expansion will cover another 5,700 towns under the network.
India currently has an installed base of 12 million desktop computers and the current base of laptops is around 0.5 million. The data usage facilities of the company clocked 333 million minutes per month as on March 31, 2005 and the data revenue touched Rs 14 crore during March 2005…
He added that around 48 percent of computer users surf the Internet and this section is growing.
I had a very bad experience with R-Connect on my Reliance FWP recently. My FWP instrument simply refused to connect, giving errors. The technical support was not able to solve my problem for almost a month. And on top of that, Reliance has a policy of not sending any service engineer to the customer’s premises. So the end result, after spending tens of hours on the phone scouting for help and running between Web-Worlds and service-centers, is that it just didn’t work.
Speculation about Virgin Mobile holding talks with MTNL, Airtel and Tata for starting Indian operations as a MVNO. Virgin Mobile is the largest MVNO in UK.
Virgin Mobile’s business strategy is to act as a MVNO (Mobile Virtual Network Operator) and sell competitively priced pre-paid handsets through retail stores while ‘piggybacking’ onto an existing operator’s mobile network.
Also, check out this comprehensive listing of MVNOs worldwide.
Nice article on Knowledge@Wharton written by Ron Garriques, EVP of Motorola’s personal communications sector. He says markets in the developing world, especially China and India are emerging as the battleground for mobile-device makers. The part from the article that struck me was:
Affordability is less important in India, where consumers like more expensive clamshell phones, Garriques said. Motorola’s market research has indicated that Indians don’t want to be stigmatized as buyers of only the candy-bar phone. “People think about the Indian market as a lower tier. About 30% of the U.S. market is high end, and maybe it’s only 5% in India. But India has 1.1 billion people” compared with 290 million in the U.S. In gross numbers, that means India’s premium market is about half the size of the United States’.
He also gives some numbers - like the total global market size of the mobile industry is about $100 billion producing approximately 700 million mobiles annually.
The essence of this Telegraph story is that the Indian mobile industry has matured because the proportion of prepaid subscribers registered a decline for the first time since the segment was introduced in 1997.
Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) director-general T. V. Ramchandran said, “More post-paid subscribers in any mobile phone market is a sign of maturity. This signifies that the Indian mobile market has crossed the line to attain maturity and is now poised for a steady growth.”
“A mature market will always have more post-paid subscribers. Europe is the best example where the proportion of post-paid and pre-paid consumers is about 60:40. Post-paid subscribers do not get churned away and are considered safe revenue providers for the operator,” said Ramachandran.
This may not be applicable to all mature mobile markets. Italy probably has the highest mobile penetration in Europe, around 105%, but the prepaid to postpaid ratio is 90:10. Spain which is another large European market is skewed towards prepaid.
Nokia has launched its new N series range of multimedia handsets featuring hard drives, multi-megapixel cameras, MP3 players and other standard smartphone functionality.
The N series product portfolio comes from Nokia’s new Multimedia business group. In order to distinguish the high-end models from the basic ones, the old four-digit model codes have been replaced by shorter names including the N70, N90, and N91.
Indian Express reports that Sadhana TV is offering instant access to 40 gurus for blessings / advice by SMS. The channel’s managing director Rakesh Gupta claims that they already receive 20,000 SMSes per day on their shortcode 7333!
What is not clear in all of this is that how does Sadhana route the SMS to the guru and manage the response etc. If you apply the 80/20 principal, majority of the 20,000 messages would be addressed for the few top gurus. This makes it a logistics problem.
Business 2.0 reports that ones of India’s largest mobile content / games developer Indiagames has roped in Cisco and Macromedia as investors. This comes after China’s TOM Online acquired a 80% stake in the company in December last year.
Cisco’s share should amount to roughly 10 percent for $2.2 million, while Macromedia’s will come out to an 8 percent stake for $1.8 milllion.
Indiagames produces games using Macromedia’s Flash Lite version of it media player. There are already 15 million Flash-enabled phones in Japan and Korean phones also use the software.
The company has posted a net profit after tax of Rs 51 crore against loss of Rs 390 crore for the corresponding previous year.
They had surprised everyone by early break-even claims, but by turning profitable in two years of their launch, they have put an end to all skepticism.
Source: CyberMedia News
Economic Times reports that the Essar group is trying to buy out the stake of foreign partners in Spice Telecom. Essar has a 33% equity in Hutch Essar (India’s third largest operator) while Spice is a provider in Punjab and Karnataka circles.
However, it will not be easy for the Essar group to buy out the holdings in Spice since the BK Modi group has the first right of refusal, said Mr Das. Essar’s offer price to the constituents of Spice is still unknown. Currently, cellular companies are being valued at about $400 per subscriber. Therefore, Spice should be valued at about $600m, if one assumes that its subscriber base totals 1.5m, as reported by the Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI).
BPL Mobile is in advanced stages of negotiations for a strategic partnership; will go the IPO way if the talks fail.
Consolidation in the industry is inevitable as the small / regional operators will find it increasingly difficult to survive against the deep pockets and presence of national operators.
Hutch and Airtel have announced cuts in their roaming charges after Communication & IT Minister Dayanidhi Maran urged the private cellular operators to do so.
Airtel, Hutch and Idea have announced a 33 percent cut in roaming airtime rates, from the current Rs 3 to Rs.1.99 effective from May 1. BPL and Idea are yet to announce the date for implementing the reduced tariff.
The number of telephone connections in India has crossed 10 crores and the customer base is likely to touch 25 crores by 2007. India is currently the world’s fifth-largest telecom market.
Source: AgencyFAQs
Airtel and IDEA have each launched monthly subscription-based services which provide market information for a monthly fee of Rs. 150. IDEA has it for the commodity markets and is delivered by SMS. Airtel’s is in association with the Bombay Stock Exchange and is a downloadable application.
The way these two services are delivered, one by SMS and other as an application, can be seen as connected with the target customer segment. IDEA’s commodity market information is for the farmers and traders in the non-urban / rural areas. Therefore, delivering it by SMS makes it accessible to the lowest common denominator. On the other hand, Airtel’s service requires its users to have a J2ME phone and GPRS connection. The installed base of phone with the above two functions is not small in India and almost all new medium-range phones come with J2ME / GPRS functionality. Still, its not for everyone. The assumption here could be that anyone who needs a realtime portfolio manager on the go will fulfill the criteria.
IDEA Cellular launches commodity updates service
IDEA’s customers will now be able to receive updates about the current prices in the major exchanges as well as spot markets all over the country, 10-15 times a day, over SMS. International markets of China, London and Tokyo, Vessel positions and port information will also be covered. IDEA Bazaar Bhav on mobiles will initially cover the commodity markets for Oil, Pulses, Cotton and Bullion. In the next phase Grains & Sugar markets would also be added to the service.
Airtel launches mobile stock tracker
The user can also Add, Modify, Delete & Search from more than 6,900 stocks listed on the BSE, keep tab on number of stock sold, calculate total profit on the basis of his stock holding at any point of time, check the performance of a scrip as per its movement in the market & use first of its kind E-Mail feature to send the performance for the day in a excel sheet with profit graphs for better stock analysis to any e-mail ID.
Rajasthan Patrika is a leading newspaper of Rajashtan. It has launched SMS services on the 6969 shortcode.
One can understand TV channels launching shortcode SMS services to add the interactive element to shows and profiting from it. But what is the synergy for a newspaper in being just another provider of ringtones, wallpapers, games etc. I guess its a simple equation, where the newspaper wants to leverage its reach (and free ad space) to milk additional moolah from its subscribers.
I think everyone will relate to this story on mobile subterfuge in social situations.
“People are turning the technology on its head,” Katz said. “They are taking a device that was designed to talk to people who are far away and using it to communicate with people who are directly around them.”
A ‘flirt by SMS’ game launched by a TV channel came with sample instructions which had a couple’s mobile number. They have been bombarded with hundreds of sleazy messages since then.
