Business Standard reports that US based Cingular has offered to sell its holding of around 33% equity shares in Idea to the other shareholders - AV Birla Group and Tata Industries - at an aggregate price of $300 million. The AV Birla Group has decided to accept the offer for acquisition by the company and its subsidiary companies, subject to necessary approvals.
Cingular has been looking to exit Idea since last year. But at the time, both Birlas and Tatas had declined to exercise their option to buy. This forced Cingular to hunt outside and found a buyer in the consortium of Singapore Telemedia and Telekom Malaysia. But the deal couldn’t be consummated due to regulatory obstacles. And then the Birlas changed their mind to join the race for Cingular’s stake.
Interview with Salil Bhargava, chief marketing officer of Reliance Infocomm funded mobile game maker Paradox Studios, who leads all international business development, strategy and marketing initiatives of the company. Nothing much in the interview except a few tidbits.
Paradox is aggregating and distributing content to carriers in association with international partners like Global Wireless Entertainment for the Indian market. Internationally, Paradox has acquired licenses in association with 2ThumbZ Entertainment to develop and market games based on Jean Claude Van Damme and BMX Stunt Teams…
Paradox’s games can be accessed and played on Hutch, Reliance and Tata networks in India and overseas. Its games has clocked up to 7.5 lakhs downloads a day - the most number of downloads in the country - on the Reliance India Mobile network.
Ericsson has bagged a contract from Idea for its push email technology - Ericsson Mobile Organiser. In October last year, Airtel had tied-up with Blackberry to become the first provider of push-email on phones in India. Orange and Idea were expected to follow suit with a similar solution. The advantage of EMO is that unlike Blackberry, users would not have to spend extra for a specialised handset if they have a Symbian / Windows phone.
Terming the push-to-talk service offered by Hutch as violation of licensing conditions, TRAI has asked government to take appropriate action against the operator.
According to TRAI, Hutch’s service led to avoidance of levy paid by private operators to state-owned BSNL and also security concerns were raised as it is difficult to monitor the calls under this service. According to DoT, Hutch has sought permission to continue offering the personal messaging service and the decision would be taken only after TEC’s recommendation.
Here is some more news and analysis on the Hutch-BPL deal.
At least in cell phone sales. According to a recent Gartner survey, Mobile phone sales will exceed one billion handsets a year by 2009 as they become the most common consumer electronics device with 2.6 billion people using one by then.
“China and India alone will account for nearly 200 million units in 2007, with the Indian market surpassing China in 2009 to reach 139 million units,” Asia Pacific analyst Ann Liang.
Business Standard reports that Essar Teleholdings will buy BPL communications in a transaction worth Rs 4400 5200 crores, making it one of the largest acquisitions in India. Hutchison Whampoa will continue to have a majority stake in the entity to be created after the merger of BPL’s mobile business with Hutchison Essar.
The merged company will have an all-India presence in 21 circles of the total 23 circles in the country. By acquiring BPL Cellular, the company will get access to Maharashtra, Kerala and Tamil Nadu circles, where it does not have operations. The presence would be a competition to AirTel, which operates in all 23 circles and Reliance Infocomm that has a presence in 21 circles.
After the merger, the combined market share of the new entity in the Mumbai market would be over 55 per cent, he said. The combined entity will have a total subscriber base of 11 million across 21 circles and will be the largest GSM operator in the country.
It will have total revenues of close to Rs 4,500 crore with BPL Communications coming in with Rs 1,100 crore.
Hindu article on technology breakthrough by Infineon, Texas Instruments and Philips which can make ultra low cost - sub Rs. 1000 handsets possible.
The global push may come in September, when the GSM Association (GSMA), which represents most of the world’s cellular telecom players, hold its 3GSM World Congress in Singapore.
Under an Emerging Markets Initiative, the association has invited its members to form strategic partnerships that would aim at creating ultra low-cost handsets specifically tailored for rapidly developing markets such as India, China and Africa. Motorola was the first mobile phone maker to take up the GSMA challenge: it launched a model in India earlier for around Rs. 1,400 making it the cheapest handset in the market.
ET profiles Rajeev Chandrasekhar of BPL on the tenth anniversary of BPL Mobile this year. Some points on why BPL couldn’t take the leap despite being an early mover.
Considering he started at the same time as Sunil Mittal, you ask him whether he feels he missed the chance to be the market leader. Rajeev believes the main difference was Sunil Mittal’s ability and psychological wherewithal to keep changing foreign partners.
“I think they had five in all,” he says. In BPL’s case, “We were old fashioned. During ’00-01, I was severely disadvantaged vis-a-vis the foreign partner. I didn’t know who to talk to for two years.”
He also believes, “Being in Delhi gave some a huge advantage. I was not good at the political part.” A big reason many believe BPL didn’t convert its first-mover advantage into market leadership is the number of legal cases it had to fight.
A consumer court has asked Reliance Infocomm to compensate a consumer for charging for calls that never materialised and levying STD tariff on local calls.
“No telephone service provider can be allowed to charge for the calls which have never materialized even after a ring of 10 to 15 seconds or charge STD rates for local calls…
“There may be customers who may wait for 30 seconds or so and if they are charged at STD tariff what else is it, if not a fraud or deceit practiced on the consumers,” the Commission observed.
Rashmi Bansal, Editor and Publisher of a youth magazine called JAM - Just Another Magazine blogs about how mobile phone technology can change the business of film-making.
Nokia is airing a commercial which focuses on how mobile technologies can potentially change film-making. The url www.mobifilms.net appears at the bottom of the screen.
Take a look at JAM TV
At JAM, we use a 2 megapixel camera phone to make short films which are hosted on our website. The section is called JAM TV. We’ve even had a ‘hit’ - our Rabbi Shergill film has been downloaded over 7000 times.
She has some neat ideas too
Today phone providers offer restaurant listings. What if u could actually view a 1 minute video of the restaurant - see what it’s like? You might pay 5 bucks to see such a film, before spending 500 bucks there.
The possibilities, really, are endless. ‘Interestingly shot’ and ‘nominally priced’ would be the two key factors in success.
Phones are landing Bollywood stars in trouble. This week saw two controversies where phones played an enabling role - the Mallika Sherawat MMS case and the Salman Khan tapes.
ToI talks of how such MMS clips benefit Cellcos and rants about the inadequacy of IT laws in the country. While it may be true that the cellcos like any content that spurs SMS/MMS/Data traffic, I’m sure there are more legal ways to do it. Countries with high mobile penentration should take a cue from South Korea where camera-enabled mobile phones are required to make “camera shutter” sounds, of at least 64 decibels, when a picture is taken.
Jan Chipchase who works in user-research at Nokia blogs about India’s informal mobile phone repair culture.
Many of these guys can strip and rebuild a mobile phone in minutes. How do these kind of services affect the mobile phone user experience? What happens when everyone has affordable access to these kind of services?
Side-note: a lot of the hyperbole surrounding western hacker culture makes me smile compared to what these guys are doing day in day out.
Via: textually.org
Bharat Sanchar Nigam (BSNL) is floating a tender for the world’s largest single procurement of GSM equipment, worth over $5 billion in the next two months.
It is inviting bids for procuring GSM equipment of a total capacity of 60m lines, 40% more than India’s existing GSM subscriber base. The value of the total order would be over Rs 20,000 crore. Siemens, Nokia, Ericsson, Alcatel, Motorola, Huawei, Nortel and ZTE are the leading GSM suppliers.
US based Good Technology has acquired the key technology assets and engineering talents of Hyderabad based JP Mobile.
The acquisition will give Good Technology access to advanced server technologies that connects with a variety of back-ends, including IBM Lotus Notes and Domino, Novell GroupWise and IMAP, developed by JP Mobile.
With this acquisition, Good Technologies also gets access to key handheld data security technologies and key team members with significant experience building mobile solutions for enterprises.
“By integrating key components of JP Mobile’s server and security technologies with our GoodLink server, service, and client software, Good will be able to extend its mobile messaging and PIM system to all of the leading corporate messaging platforms, while simultaneously raising the bar for end-to-end integrated security on Windows Mobile, Symbian, and Palm OS platforms,” said Danny Shader, CEO, Good Technology.
Sanjay Behl has joined Reliance Infocomm as head of branding. Sanjay comes from Nokia, where he was head of marketing for India. Reporting to the MD, his responsibilities includes managing the brand, products, technology, retail and media.
‘Talking Phrasebooks’ by GrapeCity India has bagged the Handango Champion Award for Best Industry Application for the Pocket PC for 2005. The software is a Windows-mobile application for the international traveler going to non-English speaking countries.
India needs more such ISVs who understand the peculiarities of mobile phones and build applications around them. Unlike PCs, Indian mobile software companies don’t have to depend on the export market to begin or survive. India’s mobile infrastructure is ready and the domestic market hungry for content and applications beyond ringtones and games.
It also finds all entries in either language that contain the words or characters you’re searching for, and instantly shows the translation of any chosen English phrase in the native language or vice versa. One click and you can hear the translation out loud in a clear native voice.
Among the GSM operators Airtel is taking the lead in launching popular data services. It had recently launched a mobile stock tracker application in association with the BSE. They are launching two more apps this month - Trak Ur Mate and Sudoku.
Trak Ur Mate was launched as a Sim Tool kit application in 2002 in India and is a dating and chat WAP application which allows users to:
Search for a match using age, gender and location parameters
Chat anonymously with thousands of others
Upload / view pictures of potential dates / friends
Find a date locally or abroad
Sudoku is a Japanese number placement puzzle that has become a craze worldwide. Its popularity is spreading in India too, with many newspapers making it a daily feature next to crosswords.
“To download the popular Japanese logic puzzle, an Airtel customer can log on to the Airtel Live WAP portal and click on the Sudoku link, which will initiate the application download procedure. One can also SMS the keyword SUDOKU to 646.”
The initial download will come free and will be pre-loaded with a Sudoku puzzle. Upon completing the first puzzle, the user can download a new puzzle through the application itself for Rs.10.
