Santa & Banta got tired of mobiles.
So they decide to use pigeons.
One day a pigeon reaches Banta without message.
Angry Banta calls Santa and asks for an explanation.

Santa says “Oye, this was a missed call yaar!”

The second event of Mobile Monday Mumbai will be on the topic “Mobile User Generated Content” and will be hosted at the office of Mouthshut.com.

Faisal Farooqui of MouthShut.com, Krishna Durbha of Reliance Communications and Karan Grover of Nokia will be leading the discussions.

Check out MoMo Mumbai’s website for more details and registration info.

Bharti Airtel Ltd., beat quarterly profit forecasts as its first-quarter net profit rose 48% to Rs 755 crore.

Total revenue increased 53% to Rs 3856 crore in the first quarter. It has posted an EBITDA of Rs 1502 crore, a YoY increase of 60%.

It had the highest ever net additions of 36.51 lakh customers in a single quarter. Wireless services accounted for 74% of first quarter sales.

Monthly ARPU slipped marginally to Rs 441 rupees from Rs 442 in the last quarter, but minutes of usage surged to 441 versus 431.

As operators sign-up the next set of users, the price-sensitive segment in urban market and the rural populace, ARPUs are expected to decline further. Its good to know that there is no steep decline in ARPU of Airtel subscribers and that it has managed to contain the decline in the last quarter.

The company’s networks cover 46% of the population. It has a presence in 4,026 towns and 101,614 villages.

Bharti has a market capitalisation of nearly $15 billion. Speaking to CNBC-TV18, Rajen Shah of Angel Broking comments on the company’s stock:

“So the results have been good and the management expects the margin to continue at the same level in the coming quarters and based on the first quarter numbers Bharti could easily report earnings of about Rs 17 for the current year, which translates into a PE of about 22, which is reasonable for Bharti. I don’t expect any major upside from the current levels in Bharti.”

Visit the company’s website for more earnings details.

Companies in Bangkok and Singapore are the most ready to mobilize their businesses, according to a recent study conducted by independent research house Saffron Hill.

The Nokia sponsored study surveyed key business and IT decision makers across 300 companies in Bangalore, Mumbai, New Delhi, Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur and Singapore.

These included questions about the organization’s usage of mobile applications such as mobile e-mail and calendar, distribution of mobile devices to employees, supporting infrastructure and device management and security policies.

Saffron Hill collated the data to plot each company’s rating or what Nokia coins, “Mobility Readiness Index” that indicates the awareness and intention to adopt a mobility strategy.

Bangkok emerged with the highest level of readiness, at a mean score of 225, followed by Singapore at 193 and Bangalore at 170.

However, Nalappan noted, the companies’ readiness to go mobile did not always correspond directly to how well they had executed a mobility strategy.

None of the 50 respondents in New Delhi have implemented policies to manage mobile devices in their company, even though 58% have made at least two mobile applications available to their staff.

In other countries 82% view security as a key concern when they purchase enterprise mobility tools. In India only 32%–the lowest percentage–see security as a key concern, where 55% view best connection as the most important component.

The three most-used mobile applications among respondents are:

• Mobile e-mail (58%)
• Mobile calendar and contact (47%)
• Access to intranet (42%)

Other key findings, across all four countries, include:

• 21 percent currently do not provide employees access to mobile applications
• 81 percent have installed antivirus software on the mobile devices
• 45 percent plan to increase mobile device purchases for their employees
• 92 percent use password protection
• 56 percent have security policies, while only 13.3 percent have policies to manage mobile devices
• 43 percent allow employees to work from home
• 74 percent recognize importance of providing employee training for mobile tools

Source: ZDNet India

The 2nd Awaaz Consumer Awards were announced on Tuesday. Awaaz is the Hindi business channel part of CNBC-TV18, India’s No. 1 business TV channel.

• BSNL was adjudged the most preferred landline
• Airtel was adjudged the most preferred cellular service provider
• Nokia was voted the most preferred handset provider

I was watching the channel yesterday when they were interviewing a Nokia person in this regard. He enumerated the reasons behind popularity of Nokia in India. Some of his points were:

• Nokia handsets are suited to Indian conditions like moisture and dust by their design
• They are sturdy (majboot) and not delicate
• Handsets have a long life
• They have higher resale value
• Their user interface is simple and intuitive
• Are affordable and available at low price points also

The research was done by AC Nielsen ORG MARG who took the opinion of 10,000 consumers of 39 product and service categories across 21 countrywide locations. Around 6,720 valid responses were taken into consideration to arrive at the scores.

Source: Agency FAQs

Radio Mirchi, Hutch, Nokia and HP announced the launch of Visual Radio service in Delhi yesterday.

Radio Mirchi has become the first FM radio station and Hutch the first operator to offer Visual Radio in India.

Visual radio allows listeners to tune in to local FM radio via the receiver on their Nokia devices while simultaneously receiving interactive information and graphics that are synchronised with radio broadcast through cellular network onto the screen of the handset.

The article quotes Hutch marketing head Naveen Chopra saying that Hutch has close to a million GPRS subscribers.

Visual Radio is only available on select Nokia handsets which are GPRS-enabled. GPRS is necessary to download the information and graphics associated with the song. For Hutch users only usage charges at the rate of 10 paise per 10 kb of data will apply.

The news of the launch is on Slashdot. MobilePundit got mini Slashdotted in the process.

Some people analogise Visual Radio with TV. But unlike TV, Visual Radio is interactive and only limited to songs on FM radio.

I think Visual Radio will face stiff competition from Podcasting and 3G mobile radio applications like Spodradio.

Do share your first impressions and comments if you are in Delhi and have tried the service.

Also Read:
Radio Mirchi to launch Visual Radio in India

Starting today, I will be writing the India dispatch on CNET Asia on my blog Technology Walla.

The blog is focused on the technology trends / IT lifestyle (non-enterprise, more personal tech) in India. Read the first post - Yuva India! Viva India!

Other tech bloggers under the banner of Regional Dispatches are: Matsushita Shuji - Japan, Jeff Ooi - Malaysia, William Moss - China, Joey Alarilla - Philippines, Vishnu K. Mahmud - Indonesia, Doug Crets - Hong Kong, Oo Gin Lee - Singapore.

Contentsutra has an exclusive report that mobile content company Mobile2win is close to receiving an investment upwards of $10 million from one of the world’s largest VC firms, Pramod Haque’s Norwest Venture Partners.

Mobile2win was set up in September 2003 and is from Alok Kejriwal’s Contests2Win stable. Its investors include Siemens Mobile Acceleration, Softbank China and Contests2win.

Financial Express has a good article which discusses issues around allotment of 3G spectrum and aspects of its pricing. It also delves into the India specific issues.

The key issue facing the regulator is the appropriateness of the policy on 3G services with respect to identification of the appropriate band, criteria for allocating spectrum and pricing mechanism considering the spectrum scarcity in the country. Traditionally three methodologies have been used for licensing in the other countries: Auction, Free licenses, Beauty contest.

World’s No. 5 handset maker Sony Ericsson has announced that second-quarter earnings almost doubled, in large part due to continued strong sales of its popular Walkman music phones.

It said that net profit rose 91% to $182 million, up from $94.7 million in the same period in 2005. Quarterly sales grew 41% to $2.29 billion from $2 billion a year earlier.

“In total we have now sold 10 million Walkman-branded phones since launch,” company CEO Miles Flint said during a conference call.

ET reports that poor performance in their global second quarter earnings has forced Korean majors Samsung and LG to look at restructuring their GSM mobile business in India.

Incidentally, LG posted its first loss in ten quarters on Wednesday, recording a net loss of 9.7 bn won ($1=957.5 Won) in Q2 ended June 30, compared with a profit of 150.6 bn won a year earlier. On the other hand, Samsung announced about a week back that its global net profit fell by 11% in Q2 at 1.51 trillion won — its lowest quarterly profit in nearly three years.

Both the companies have no plans to enter the monochrome segment, which accounts for over 60% of the Indian market. But they are planning to strengthen their share in the low-end colour handset segment.

The chaebols have been criticised for their poor performance due to absence in the fast growing low-end mobile handset segment in critical emerging markets like India and China.

For starters, the Indian subsidiaries of LG and Samsung have drawn-up concrete plans for segmentation of the low-end market. The giants are also looking at options to lower cost of production in their Indian facilities to become cost competitive in the long-run.

Samsung will slightly deviate from its existing strategy to target only the mid and hi-end of the market by launching colour handsets at a price band of Rs 3,000-3,400.

Analysts feel most of the growth in the handset industry is coming from the low-end handset segment targeting the new subscriber base in markets like India and China. Price erosion is further expected in this segment and Gartner feels that the magic figure for low-end handset prices in India will drop to as low as Rs 1,000.

Announcing its second quarter results yesterday, Motorola posted all time high mobile device sales this quarter, including record operating earnings from devices.

The company’s sales increased 46% to $7,140 million while its operating earnings rose 62 per cent to $799 million.

Motorola has retained its second position in India and world wide, while expanding its global market share to 22% in the second quarter this year. The company also expanded its market share to more than 20% in China, up 8.9 percentage points from the year-ago quarter.

Nokia, the world’s largest maker of mobile phones, said second-quarter profit gained 43% while net income rose to $1.44 billion. Sales rose 22% to $12.24 billion from $10.1 billion.

Analysts are of the opinion that handset sales in China and India were likely to have boosted the companies’ earnings.

While Motorola’s earnings have beat estimates, those of Nokia are largely seen as reflecting stagnant growth in the industry. Bloomberg article has more details.

PayMate, a mobile payments company spun off by Coruscant Tec, has collaborated with Citibank and Euronet to launch a mobile payment solution for Citibank customers.

Heres how PayMate works:

• Citibank customers need to sign up for this service with the bank by simply sending “PayMate” as an SMS to 2484.
• The customer will then be called back and registered for the service following which they can conveniently shop at Rediff, Naukri, Cleartrip, Jeevansaathi and 99 Acres for their products.
• Once the product has been selected, the user would send a single SMS with pin (provided by the bank) confirming the transaction.
• On receiving this SMS, the bank will verify the user’s mobile number with the account and on confirmation will debit the account accordingly.
• The merchant and the customer will receive a confirmation message from the bank approving the transaction.

A mobile payment platform such as PayMate could potentially see users buy their airline tickets, railways tickets, shop for their personal needs such as groceries, apparels etc. and pay through their mobile wallet.

Ajay Adiseshann, Founder & MD, PayMate:

“The demand for VAS from mobile phones is growing at a tremendous rate, thus we are bringing in new services, better applications, richer content and continuous connection capabilities. PayMate is a robust and convenient m-commerce solution, which will provide benefits to all members of the ecosystem, ranging from the operator, to the service provider all the way to the end consumer. We are initially offering PayMate with Rediff, Naukri, Cleartrip, Jeevansaathi and 99 Acres, and are already in talks with several other service providers thereby giving customers’ greater options.”

Kumar Apurva-National Head:- Mobility, New Media & Ad Sales, Naukri.com:

“The Naukri.com group has believed in constant innovation and this year a major thrust is to go beyond the web and deliver relevant content on multiple devices and multiple platforms. We see huge scope in an application like PayMate as VAS in India is still driven by SMS, and the efficiency of a payment solution like PayMate looks very promising.”

PayMate India recently received its first round of funding from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB) and Sherpalo Ventures.

The following are touted as salient features of PayMate:

• PayMate allows mobile subscribers to make payments for merchant services using their cell phones. It is connected to merchants and banks to enable transactions.
• PayMate does not require any additional software or Mobile SIM upgrade to process transactions.
• Users just require a basic entry level phone with SMS enabled to transact, which is available on all cell phones in India.
• PayMate allows for a transaction to be completed with a single SMS (one click) technology.
• It is the only solution which will allow for both credit and debit card transactions using a mobile phone.
• Users are not required to disclose banking information.
• Offers safe and secure transactions as the platform does not operate over the public domain unlike the internet but over the signaling system which is secure.
• The trust model is based on the recommendations by Ernst & Young; which provides the security measures for both the bank as well as the customer.

Source: Press Release

IndiGo, a new low-fare airline, launching in early August has announced a mobile website for GPRS-capable phones available at http://mobile.goindigo.in/

This service not only allows customers to book and pay for flights, but also enables them to check for flight information. Customers can pay for their booked tickets within 24 hours at a number of convenient locations. Information on this service is available for the customers on the IndiGo website, www.goindigo.in.

IndiGo is perhaps the first airline to provide a mobile website. Most other airlines offer bookings and flight status checking through SMS. Indian Airlines is available on R-World and Air Deccan is part of the mobile payment application-on-phone by Jigrahak.

The software for this service is provided by eSpherical.com Inc., a US-based company.

Source: MoneyControl.com

Mobile product retailers in Mumbai have been on strike since a month, protesting against a cut in by mobile operators.

For over a month now, retailers have not been selling recharge vouchers and new connections of Hutch, Airtel and BPL in most areas of Mumbai. They were protesting against reduction in commission from 3.25% to 2.36%. The margins in products of other service providers, including Reliance, Tata and MTNL range from 4% to 6%.

ET reports that the strike could possibly fizzle out over the next few days following differences of opinion among retailers.

Some members of the Mobile and Telecom Retailers’ and Distributors’ Association (MTRDA) have decided to stop the sale of Hutch products alone, after the company threatened to further reduce commissions from 2.36% to 1.5%.

The association’s decision to start selling recharge vouchers and new connections of all other telcos, including Bharti Airtel and BPL Mobile, when Airtel has not agreed to raise the commissions of retailers, has not gone down well with other retailers.

MTRDA also alleged that none of the Hutch distributors in Mumbai had given TDS certificate to retailers. “We will soon write to the Income Tax department to investigate whether the money was deposited in the government treasury or not,” MTRDA convenor Raj Thacker told ET.

Distributors of other telcos do not deduct tax at source.

Hutch is the largest operator in Mumbai with over 34 lakh users. Dealers say that the company may be affected by about 15-20% reduction in sales.

Mr Thacker pointed out that there were nearly 12,000 points of sale for telecom products, including over 8,000 retail outlets, in Mumbai. Out of these 8,000, nearly 3,000 control over 60% of the trade in Mumbai.

Samsung hopes to capture one-fifth of India’s mobile phone handset market by focusing on the replacement market.

Around half of the phones now sold in the big cities such as Delhi and Mumbai are to customers upgrading from older, less fashionable models, said Sutikshan Naithani, vice president for sales and marketing at Samsung’s Indian subsidiary.

Samsung expects around 40 million handsets to be sold in the country this year. It expects the handset market to continue growing about 50% a year to reach close to 100 million units in 2008, when it hopes to have 20% of the market.

Samsung has discontinued its cheaper monochrome-screen models. The company’s handsets are priced between 8,000 and 22,000 rupees.

The South Korean company, the world’s No. 3 handset maker, has around 10 percent of the Indian market, having recently lost around 5 percentage points to makers of cheap, entry-level phones such as Nokia, Senior Vice President Ike Chung said.

Source: Reuters

The Foreign Investment Promotion Board (FIPB) has cleared Hutch Essar’s proposal to raise FDI from 49% to 68%, notwithstanding the strong opposition from National Security Advisor MK Narayanan and the company’s Indian partner, Essar.

The foreign investment includes the contentious 10% indirect shareholding of Egypt-based Orascom, which it holds by virtue of its 19.3% equity in Hutch International.

National Security Advisor had objected to the deal saying that Orascom’s acquisition of equity in HTIL was a threat to national security as it was a dominant player in Pakistan and Bangladesh.

The board’s decision shows that the institutional decision-making process is capable of insulating itself from unreasonable insecurities on the national security front. This is likely to give comfort to potential commercial partners in countries such as Egypt, where questions against Orascom had raised hackles.

This is also a cause of dispute between Essar and Hutch.

Essar says that it was not taken into confidence when Hutch sold equity in HTIL to Orascom. In a letter to the telcom department it had sought clarification on whether entry of a strategic partner (Orascom) at the foreign holding company level (HTIL), required prior DoT approval, especially if such shareholding change in the holding company triggers changes in the indirect shareholding of Hutch Essar.

The FIPB clearance includes Hutchison Telecommunication (India)’s acquisition of an additional 5.11% stake in the unlisted Indian cellular JV of Hutchison Essar for $450m from Hinduja TMT.

Source: ET

DoT today issued a notice to all mobile operators in Delhi, Chennai, Mumbai, Hyderabad and Haryana circles, giving them 15 days to explain why they should not be fined for violating norms.

Mobile operators had been earlier directed to discontinue all connections issued without proper verification.

“Nearly 10-15 per cent of all mobile subscribers (100 million) are unverified. However, the number of connections that may be disconnected cannot be determined at this moment.”

Business Standard quotes an Airtel spokesperson who denied receiving such a notice and added the company was on track to verify subscribers according to the deadline of October set by the DoT.

US-based VAS platform provider, Telenity will set up an R&D centre in India with an initial investment of Rs 30 crore.

Telenity CEO Dilip Singh:

“We will set up an Research and Development centre either in Delhi or in Pune by the end of next year to offer application-based services to consumers. We will invest rs five crore in the first phase and increase it to Rs 30 crore in the next 3-5 years,”

BSNL is Telenity’s customer, where it powers their value-added and location-based services.

Value-added services contributed to 10 per cent of total the services revenue of operators in India, he said, adding revenues from the sector were growing at an annual rate of 30 per cent and was likely to grow at a faster pace in the coming few years.

Source: ET

After Reliance Communications, the smaller CDMA-based telecom operators also want to migrate from CDMA to GSM and have started applying for GSM spectrum.

Punjab-based HFCL Infotel Ltd has sent an application to the department of telecommunications (DoT), while Rajasthan-based Shyam Telelink Ltd is planning to do so shortly.

Both the companies have a unified access service licence (UASL) and are eligible for providing services of technology of their choice.

According to an HFCL official, the company plans to offer its fixed wireless services (FWP) on the CDMA technology but for mobile services it intends to migrate from CDMA to GSM. The company said that in mobile the infrastructure cost in GSM-based technology was lower than CDMA.

Since there is no national roaming pact among CDMA mobile operators, single circle operators, like HFCL, are not able to provide roaming to their subscribers, which is a big handicap. Shifting to GSM would solve the problem.

HFCL’s total subscriber base at the end of May stood at 327,371, with mobile contributing 62,361. Similarly, Shyam’s total base is at 204,699, with mobile contributing 27,627.

State-owned Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd and Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd also offer CDMA-based mobile and FWP services but only to a limited extent.

Source: Financial Express

Radio Mirchi will launch a Visual Radio service in Delhi by the end of this month. It will be available to Hutch and Airtel subscribers who have a compatible handset.

Most of the mid-level Nokia handsets with FM radio tuner are Visual Radio compatible. For example, the Nokia N70, Nokia N71, Nokia N80, Nokia N91, Nokia 3230, Nokia 3250, Nokia 6280, Nokia 7370 etc.

Delhi will become the the third city in the world to have a commercial Visual Radio service after Singapore and Helsinki (Finland).

“We have identified four key markets including Mumbai for launching visual radio. Though it is too early to exploit strong revenues from this medium, it will give us a presence in emerging platforms like mobile phones,” says Entertainment Network (India) Ltd managing director and CEO AP Parigi.

I think Visual Radio has the potential to be a music distribution channel similar in its business model to iTunes. If a listener likes a song that is being played, he can not only get additional tidbits about the song on the screen, but decide on impulse to download the full song onto his handset or purchase its ringtone if the station is offering them.

For those who don’t live in Delhi, Singapore and Helsinki (that is most of us), you can get a good idea about the service and its potential by trying out a mobile radio product called Spodradio. The only difference between a Visual Radio station and Spodradio is that the song is delivered over GPRS/EDGE/3G network in Spodradio.

Animation Xpress explains:

Radio stations are turning to new revenue streams as they are facing competition from emerging technologies. Specific threats from MP3, which had an estimated 55 million devices in the market in 2005, and internet webcasting are eating into the earnings of traditional radio. So the way out is to adopt into new digital platforms like direct-to-home (DTH) and digital audio broadcasting (DAB).

Related: Visual Radio