Business Standard has an article on Netcore’s MyToday SMS service.

MyToday offers 20+ SMS channels on various topics like News, Sensex, Cricket, Jokes, Horoscope and Bollywood free-of-cost to subscribers.

A user needs to subscribe to the service by sending an SMS to a pre-designated number (9845398453) with the text START followed by the name of service (Like NEWS or JOKES).

Abhijit Saxena, CEO, Netcore Solutions:

“The mobile phone is a true convergence device which would shortly replace the TV and the computer and text messaging is the most potent medium to reach large addressable audience in the shortest span of time,”

Even though it is a recently-launched service, the company sends out around 8 million SMSes per day to around 2.5 million subscribers. It is also adding around 20,000 new subscribers every day.

Free of cost!? Here’s how Netcore plans to make money.

Netcore Solutions, which has a tech team of around 110 personnel working in Mumbai and Bangalore, is looking at recovering its expenses for providing the service through advertisements.

Below the text of the subscribed content, it provides advertisements and links to the websites of the advertisers. It has roped in Birla Sun Life Insurance, Tata Sky, Nokia, Prudential ICICI and Moneycontrol.com among others as advertisers.

Netcore Solutions is the company I work for, when I’m not busy blogging or organising Mobile Mondays.

Joji Thomas Philip writes in ET that data compiled by TRAI reveal that SMS use has steadily fallen from September 2006.

• GSM operators have witnessed close to 9% drop in the outgoing SMSs during the Apr-Jun ‘07 quarter.
• An average GSM user now sends about 35 SMSs per month as compared to 39 during the previous quarter.
• GSM operators’ total revenue from SMS has now fallen below the 5% mark.
• During the Jan-Mar ‘07 quarter, GSM operators saw a 19% decline in outgoing text messages.
• Outgoing SMS per subscriber (for GSM) declined by 18.75% from 48 in Dec ‘06 to 39 in Mar ‘07.
• CDMA customers sent 20 sms during the quarter-ended June against 24 SMSs during the Jan-Mar ‘07 quarter.

Reasons attributed to the decline in usage and revenue are:

Upward revision in SMS tariffs by several GSM service providers. And rationalization of tariff plans, where many operators discontinued non-profitable SMS packages.

During the quarter, there have been tariff reports indicating reduction in the number of free and discounted SMS under various packs and plans, increase in the rate for SMS, restriction on the usage of free/discounted SMS on festival/customary days.

Steady increase in the minutes of usage. The average SMS usage is bound to fall as operators went rural because customers in non-urban areas are comparably less text savvy.

For GSM players, the average increase in outgoing minutes of usage (MOU) was 2.2% during the last quarter.

This may be good news for the VAS industry. Despite the dip in SMS usage, the overall VAS revenues is increasing every quarter.

SMS is no longer the single driving force behind VAS revenues — music, gaming and other applications contribute significantly

Rediff reports that the two finalists of Indian Idol 3 drew a combined tally of 7 crore SMS votes between September 14, when the lines were opened for voting, and September 23, when the voting ended.

If we take the sms cost of each vote at Rs 3, the revenue generated via SMS during the nine days of voting would be around Rs 21 crore.

• 77 lakh votes per day
• 3.2 lakh sms per hour
• 5400 sms per minute
• 90 sms per second

Krishna Durbha, Head - Revenue and Marketing, Reliance Communications says:

“These programs are essentially about immediacy, People believe they are endorsing their stars; they also believe they have a voice in the outcome and that their opinion matters, and so they send SMSes favour of their favourites.”

The numbers are just mind boggling. Someone needs to do a study of the Indian Idol, Vote4Taj and other reality shows phenomenon in India.

If sms voting was allowed in Indian Goverment elections, we would have more than the average 50% voting and perhaps better elected representatives. But thats not possible.

I think there is an opportunity to start a not-for-profit democratic People’s Forum which allows online and mobile participation. The issues, voting and opinion can be aggregated on a independent platform (and yet emergent), making it a credible source. Media can then genuinely issue calls to activism on issues of importance. It will help in riddance of vote fragmentation and accusations of emotional manipulation towards earning revenues via SMS; also making the activism of some consequence.

Voice of India?

Here’s wishing all readers of Mobile Pundit a Happy 2007!

Would like to take this opportunity to announce the launch of “Free SMS Greetings” service from MyToday.com.

Q. Free? So whats the cost catch.
A. No cost. Swear on Santa.

MyToday SMS Greetings allows you to send free greetings via SMS to any mobile in India. You can type 110 characters worth of message while remaining 50 characters are used for MyToday ads.

Visit www.MyToday.com from either your phone’s or computer’s browser. Please check the cost of GPRS data with your operator, if you are using the on-phone browser.

FremantleMedia, the owner of the Idols reality show, has chosen Mobile2win over other Asian competitors for powering the Philippine Idol.

Mobile2win will handle the entire connectivity with all operators, back-end infrastructure, voting, collation and vote management for the 14 weeks of the show.

Mobile2win had worked previously with FremantleMedia on Indian Idol, the Indian version of the Idols show. Indian Idol got more than 55 million votes via SMS between Nov ‘04 to Mar ‘05. At Rs 3 per SMS, that is Rs 16.5 crore (Rs 165 million).

Jon Penn, FremantleMedia’s VP, Licensing and Interactive, Asia Pacific said,

“We chose mobile2win as they have done a fantastic job over several years for the voting and interactivity on Indian Idol. Their approach is systematic and professional and we know they will do a great job for us in the Philippines, one of the most ‘interactive’ markets in the world.”

Philippines boasts the highest number of SMS sent per day.

Source: AgencyFAQs

Oxford Bookstore has launched a SMS service for book lovers to check for new releases and bestsellers. The technology for this short-code based “pull” service is provided by Mobile 365.

Its basically an on-demand shortcode service where the user sends a SMS with a keyword to 6365 and gets back a reply with the asked-for info.

E.g. Sending “OBSNNF” to 6365 gets you the latest 3 business, new age and non-fiction books.

Rajiv Chowdhry, CEO, Apeejay Oxford Bookstores:

Our focus in initiating this mobile relationship is to understand and value consumer preference when it comes to reading and buying books. In future, we look forward to building a strong mobile community of booklovers through this non-intrusive, quick and well-focussed information distribution channel.

One keyword that is missing and which I would like as a user, is to send the ISBN number or book name and get back some details like the author, its Oxford sales rank (denoting its popularity) and the availability of that book at Oxford.

TRAI had sought comments from Telcos on imposing Interconnect Usage Charge on SMS.

All operators, except Bharti, have opposed the IUC regime. They have argued that the existng system is working well.

“We believe that the regulator should forbear in the matter of IUC charges for SMS and leave it to the service providers for mutual arrangements for mutual charges for exchange of SMS, if they so desire,” said cellular operators association of India (COAI).

Bharti Airtel has supported IUC regime saying this would discourage spam SMS. It pointed out that some operators are offering free SMS to their subscribers and this increases pressure on other networks.

Under IUC regime, an operator from whose network the SMS originates is required to pay a charge to the operator where the receiving subscriber is. Operators have said that this would raise tariff for SMS.

Source: ET

In a consultation paper on regulating SMS, telecom regulator TRAI has proposed a interconnect usage charges (IUC) on SMS. But it acknowledged that there is an apprehension that IUC could increase SMS tariffs and has therefore sought opinion of all the stakeholders by June 30.

What is an Interconnect Usage Charge?

Interconnect charges are paid by one operator to another for terminating calls from the originating operator network to the destination / terminating operator network.

So if a Hutch subscriber calls a Airtel number than Hutch has to pay certain percentage of the call charge to Airtel.

At present, interconnect charges are paid by operators to each other for voice calls.

There is no such charge for SMS.

The move is aimed at compensating operators whose networks are getting choked due to incoming SMS traffic.

“With operators offering different bundled tariff plans for SMS and with SMS being increasingly used as an advertising medium, the SMS traffic imbalance across the operators is increasing. There is a possibility that some networks are burdened with a large proportion of incoming SMS traffic. Thus, there seems to be a need for regulatory intervention to ensure that no operator assumes an unnecessary burden,” TRAI said in the consultation paper.

I believe the problem is aggravated by bulk SMS providers who use their pipe with one operator to blast messages across operators. Since there is interconnect for SMS delivery but no IUC, the operators at the receiving end are forced to carry that traffic without any gains.

The latest cover story of India’s top business magazine Business World is on Mobile VAS. Needless to say that these are boom times for the Indian mobile VAS industry. Rediff has syndicated the story and its a must read. Have captured some salient points.

The article cites a Lehman Brothers report which puts the size of the industry at Rs 2300 crores. This includes texting and is not just operator share. By 2010, the report estimates mobile data to be a $10-billion (Rs 43,000-crore) market in India. The report says that EBITDA from data revenue could go up to 65%, compared to 30% or so from voice.

To put things into perspective, India has 108 million homes with TV, 90 million mobile users and 7.5 million Internet subscribers.

So whats all this fuss about mobile entertainment.

Indian Idol got more than 55 million votes via SMS between Nov 04 to Mar 05. At Rs 3 per SMS, that is Rs 16.5 crore (Rs 165 million). The telecom companies made Rs 11.5 crore (Rs 115 million), and Sony about Rs 5 crore (Rs 50 million).

Radio Mirchi gets 40,000-45,000 SMSes a day.

Indian music industry got about Rs 140 crore (Rs 1.40 billion) or 20% of its legitimate revenues from mobile music in 2005.

Shridhar Subramaniam, MD, Sony-BMG says a hit film can generate Rs 1-1.2 crore - about 5% of an album’s sale on mobile revenues. Its big mobile hit of the year is Rang De Basanti.

Saregama makes half its money on ringtones through its catalogue. It “sells nothing but ringtones. With new releases, we have the rights to images and wallpapers”, says Sarkar.

The big media firms — Star, Sony and BCCL, among others — have set up entire divisions for mobile entertainment.

Star CEO Peter Mukerjea has maintained that mobile telephony should eventually bring in 30% of the company’s revenues. And Sony will set up its own backend for digital downloads this year.

Of Reliance’s 18 million subscribers, more than 10 million use data regularly. Roughly half its data revenues comes from film-related content.

• At the end of December 2005 R World, its mobile portal had 5.3 million visitors.
• About 32% of the portal’s revenues came from ringtones and 20% from films.
• Games and cricket form a respectable 8-9 per cent each.

What worked for Mobile VAS in India.

Most Indians use the mass transport system like the Japanese and unlike the Americans who drive cars to work.

Customers are cool with paying for information on the mobile unlike the Internet.

Mobile phone is bridging the digital divide (that the Internet was supposed to)
in smaller towns and villages for entertainment and information.

India has collecting societies - the Indian Performing Rights Society (IPRS) and Phonographic Performance Limited (PPL). According to rates prescribed by PPL, anywhere between 25-40% comes back to music firms.

The media companies are not the ones to be left behind.

For media buying and planning firms such as Group M, all the work with mobile phones is “brand centric,” says Tushar Vyas, its national director (interaction).

That means that if Fa’s creative and media plan demands that there should be a mobile play, say, a contest, poll or plain branding, then Group M will look at content or partnerships where it can promote Fa on the mobile phone.

Advertisers are trying their best to get their two bits in. So, Thums Up has a game it designed with Mobile2Win, Castrol has its own ringtone (and 100,000 people actually downloaded it), and Reliance offers bill payment on R World, railway bookings, and even exam results.

Can any article on mobile entertainment be complete without a mention of the ongoing feud between the operators and aggregators on revenue shares.

Currently, the Indian market is split roughly at 60:30:10 between mobile operators, media companies and aggregators. Mobile operators argue that they make the investment and control the consumer, so they should keep a lion’s share of the mobile data pie.

Prasad of Reliance says that internationally, operators pay revenue share only on the basis of actual downloads. In India, the figure on which this is calculated includes network usage and subscription fee and, therefore, the percentage that comes back to the operator has to be larger.

Ultimately, in a fragmented, oversupplied content market, it should be easy to get good stuff if you have a sense of what will work and what won’t. Media companies have a nose for it, mobile companies don’t.

So, as the need for differentiated content, especially with TV, songs, news and more audio-visual content becoming important, expect much more poaching from programming departments of TV channels, and lots and lots of loose alliances.

Some quotable quotes:

Viren Popli, senior vice-president, (interactive), Star India
“The VCR gave back to consumers the concept of time; the mobile will give them back the concept of space. You can consume entertainment when you want and where you want it.”

Raj Singh, director, Activemedia Technology
“Only 60 million people know English. Hindi is where the eyeballs are”

Hemant Sachdev, director (marketing and communications), Bharti Tele-Ventures
“The Indian consumer is willing to pay a premium for VAS”

Other notable facts:

India has one of the lowest spectrum allocation per GSM operator in the world, about 6 Mhz against, over 25 in the UK or over 20 in China.

Just 15-20% of the phones in India have colour screens and/or cameras.

The effective rate per minute has moved from Rs 1.50 to Re 0.95, while costs per minute have been chopped from Rs 1.25 to Re 0.87 on its way to becoming Rs 0.8.

The Madras High Court has lifted the stay on 18 telecom companies from sending SMS of match alerts for the India-Pakistan one-day series saying the company had preferred the suit belatedly, without disclosing all material facts.

However, the court made it clear that SMS was the exclusive right of event organisers and that mobile operators could not exploit it for commercial purposes.

Describing the SMS rights as the “first of its kind,'’ Ms. Justice Banumathi said:

This court is of the view that the information made available over SMS is collected only from the games telecast over television. So the SMS right is the exclusive right of the organisers. Scores and facts, though in the public domain, are gathered from the telecast series … such hot news/scores create a narrow quasi property right in news which may not be copyrighted … mobile phone operators cannot exploit the game by sending scores or the alerts through SMS technology and exploit it for commercial purposes.’

Marksman counsel argued that real-time match alerts were time-sensitive information requiring special protection. The telecom companies were attempting to misappropriate the information for commercial exploitation, he said. The BCCI said SMS was a “textual right'’ such as telecast or audio rights. He said that even the BCCI might auction such rights.

The Madras High Court has asked service providers across the country not to give score updates of the India-Pakistan one-day international cricket series on mobile phones and websites after a firm said it had exclusive rights on the information.

The court was acting on a civil suit filed by Marksman Marketing Services, which said it had secured the rights to send out short messaging texts (SMSs) of scores from Vectracom, a Pakistani firm.

Vectracom had entered into an agreement with the Pakistan Cricket Board, with respect to the exclusive global SMS rights of the India-Pakistan series. Marksman argued that it thus had exclusive rights to “disseminate information relating to scores, alerts and updates or other events or happenings of the tour through SMS”.

Justice M. Chockalingam who heard the plea said:

“The court is of considered opinion that it is a fit case for an ad-interim injunction.”

The judge held that the “balance of convenience” was in favour of the complainant and gave an interim ruling applicable for four weeks, the period of the ODIs.

The petitioner complained that during the India-Pakistan Test series that concluded this month, Indian mobile phone service providers were sending scores and updates through SMSs to their subscribers without permission from Vectracom.

The companies providing instant score updates named in the civil suit are Bharati Televentures (Airtel), the state-run Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL), Reliance Infocom, Hutchison Essar (Hutch), IDEA Cellular (Idea), Aircell Cellular, Aircell Ltd, Spice Telecom, Tata Indicom, Sify, Yahoo Webservices Ltd, IndiaTimes, IMI Mobile, PhonyTunes.com, Rediff.com, Pyro Mobile, ON Mobile Asia-Pacific and CricInfo India. The suit also names the Board for Control of Cricket in India (BCCI and the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI).

Exchange4Media article talks about media companies tracking viewership for their shows before the TRP data comes out by using SMS response as a metric.

ActiveMedia Technology is a provider of such mobile services to channels like Aaj Tak, Headlines Today, MTV India, Ten Sports, Janmat, Jaya TV, Total TV, Doordarshan, CNBC-TV18, Sony Television, Discovery Channel and Sab TV.

These channels have seen an amazing correlation between real time SMS response levels and TRP data published days later. In fact, they can now even predict with surprising accuracy their own TRPs as soon as a programme is aired. No need to wait for published data to tell you if you have a hit or flop in your hands.

ActiveMedia Technology, Co-founder and Executive Director, Raj Singh

“Some of the must have features of a good TRP tool include a large installed base (sample size to be accurate), representative distribution (match media distribution), record ‘real’ viewship (not just channel surfers), capture geographic/time data (support data mining insights), fast processing and collation (quickly show what’s working), and cost effective (getting market data shouldn’t cost an arm and leg).”

“Do media owners really have such a tool available today? The interactive device that’s sitting in the hands over 70 million Indians is pretty interesting. Media owners just need to get viewers to start SMSing to get it to work. SMS against our TRP tool ‘must have’ features are that 100 million Indians with posses a mobile phone by 2006. Mobile penetration is not just in top metros, its everywhere. To send an SMS a viewer must actually have watched your channel long enough to respond. The time and location (top four metros, or state) is recorded for every SMS. It is possible within seconds to see the SMS response to anything flashed on the channel. The viewer pays to send the SMS to the channel,” added Singh.

I think the response rate also depends on the question / trigger. Viewers normally realise that they are paying a premium to send such SMSes and are unlikely to be always generous in sending them. TV channels have to make it compelling for the viewers to respond by SMS by offering incentives like prizes, name on screen etc.

Like a PC connected to the internet, mobile phone is also a two-way interactive device which can be leveraged by marketers. Another similarity between the PC and mobile is that the response is instant and measurable.

I was wondering about the SMS traffic on this new year. Here are some numbers from ET.

Over December 31 and January 1, close to 4m SMSs were exchanged on our network in Mumbai,” Jayant Khosla, CEO, Mobility, Bharti Tele-Ventures, Mumbai. While the figure was around 8m in the capital last year, it hovered near 11m during this new year weekend.

“Last year, 8.5m SMSs were sent by Idea users. This year, the figure is over 11m,” an Idea official said.

SP Shukla, president, Wireless Products and Services, Reliance Infocomm said the SMS traffic has been increasing daily. “On Diwali, more than 20m messages were sent by Infocomm users.

I don’t know if its true for others, but I don’t get return receipts for SMSes sent on such heavy traffic days.

In association with Gujarat Cricket Association and Converge Labs, Hutch is offering m-tickets (mobile tickets) for the India vs. Sri Lanka match at Motera through SMS.

“Mobile users should register himself at www.convergelabs.com/gca on the basis of credit card and its expiry date, from where customer will get MPIN, a unique mobile pin number through which mobile transactions would be possible,” explained Patel.

After receiving MPIN, mobile user will have to SMS TKT to 4959 and in reply will get the schedule of the five day test match with availability of tickets.

“According to the schedule, customer will have to send an SMS with MPIN and in reply will get barcode, which is confirmed ticket,” explained Dongre.

SMS charges will be deducted and tax will be added for the usage of credit card.

Looks like Converge Labs is getting some traction for its m-ticketing product. It had recently launched m-ticketing for a multiplex in Gujarat.

AOL owned Tegic Communications has announced an enhanced version of the T9 predictive text input software in Hindi.

In one of my recent posts on vernacular SMS in India, I had expressed concerns on the difficulty in learning to SMS in Indian languages compared to English; But having Indian language T9 dictionary on the phones would certainly help in its takeoff.

Tegic’s T9 predictive software helps users of mobile phones to write SMSes quickly in 49 languages, including five Indian languages.

This new version of the Hindi T9 software offers users advanced word completion functionality, enabling mobile users to press just a few keys to pull up the desired word.

Further, stem locking, which allows users to highlight the first few characters of a word to trim down the word choice list, helps users to more quickly identify and complete their intended word.

T9 is a predictive text input technology designed for mobile phones. The technology allows words to be entered by a single keypress for each letter, as opposed to the multiple keypress approach used in the older generation of mobile phones. The primary application of this is to simplify the writing of text messages.

Gurgaon-based ConvergeLabs has launched m-ticketing designed for Deep Multiplex in Gujarat. The ticket will be sent as a bar-code on the mobile, which will allow entry on a quick swipe through a scanner installed in the multiplex.

The user has to get a M-PIN, a unique pin number that will authorise mobile payments, by registering once on the web. After obtaining the M-PIN, users can book tickets on phone and receive advance booking details of movies.

Amol Patel, president of ConvergeLabs, said, “Convergelabs is proud to be the first to launch its patent pending m-ticketing technology for movie theatres, after having successfully launched it for cricket matches in the country”.

Mobile barcode services look very promising in their potential. Most of the handsets today support receiving a barcode picture message. And to get the ball rolling, all it takes is signing up mass consumer touchpoints like cinema halls, exhibitions, sports events etc. which also do the job of promoting the service.

Recently, another Delhi based company, ValueFirst had announced their mobile barcode services.

Also Read: Gujarat Venture Finance invests in ConvergeLabs

India is going to send out around 80 billion SMSes in vernacular in 2010, according to this article in Hindustan Times.

“That is a realistic view of the market,” says Mridul Srivastava, senior country manager of global telecom enabler AOL Mobile. “An optimistic, but achievable, outlook would put that number much higher.”

Here’s how the numbers add up. According to UK-based Pordio Research, India sent out 12.3 billion SMSes in 2004. In 2010, it should send out 180 billion; of this, says Srivastava, more than 40 per cent will be vernacular text messages.

Raju Sastry, technology marketing manager, Nokia India - that pioneered local language interface in India with the Nokia 3210 in 2000 - agrees that there’s a vernacular boom:

“Despite being comfortable with English, most consumers prefer communicating in their own language as it helps them connect better.” Nokia has already incorporated nine languages across 40 of its handsets.

Having phone interfaces in Indian languages is useful and stands good chance of adoption. But changing behaviour of users to start SMSing in Hindi or Tamil is much more difficult than that. Even today people chat / SMS in Hindi using the English script.

Anand Sridharan of VC firm Bessemer Venture Partners does a deep(ly) (funny) analysis on the short code craze sweeping the nation.

This SMS-craze falls into two segments. The first lot includes companies (mostly in financial services) hoping that the reader is stupid (or lonely) enough to open up their cellphone to a barrage of sales calls. The second comprises a new breed of TV programs, where viewers decide the fate of bright-eyed men and women, who attempt to sing and dance their way to fame.

And now his wish-list:

I am awaiting the speciality magazine for shortcode-afficionados (suggestions welcome for what this mag would be called). The mag would include a weekly shortcode popularity ranking, thumb-exercises to stay sms-fit (accompanied by photos of sixpack thumbs), free software to change your sms font to Helvetica etc. That would be followed by specialized brand consultants who would help companies identify the shortcode that best reflects their brand positioning (after which, the aforementioned bank would ditch 6161, 8558, 7333 in favor of 4722). As a logical extension of TV show voting, Bihar elections would be done on SMS (sms Laloo or Nitish to 24427). Naturally, the elections would not get completed, as multiple sets of goons ‘capture’ sms gateways of mobile operators and furiously stuff stamped ballots into hapless servers.

Enticing the user with rewards to drive short code services like contests etc. makes sense, but I have never been able to understand the rationale behind using shortcodes where the user is expected to (a) take action to receive further info and (b) pay a premium for doing so. I wonder why hasn’t anybody thought of a toll-free short code yet?

UK based interactive digital broadcaster Cellcast has set up its Indian subsidiary, Cellcast Interactive India, headed by Pankaj Thakar.

The newly established subsidiary will help Cellcast address the rising demand for interactive entertainment in India. The company’s programmes and technology platform will enable broadcast partners to capture new revenue streams that are independent of subscription income and advertising, and build new audiences among the highly sought-after youth demographic.

In March this year, Cellcast launched a 24 hour interactive channel called Play TV on the Zee Network in partnership with the Essel Group. Since Play TV’s launch, premium rate SMS traffic is said to have doubled month on month.

“Cellcast is one of the few companies with an end-to-end interactive television solution, combining state of the art technology with compelling programming within a proven business model. With experience drawn from several continents, our expertise, programme portfolio, applications and technology platform deliver a distinct advantage to our broadcast and telecom partners in this rapidly expanding sector,” he added.

Source: IndianTelevision.com

ValueFirst’s barcode service provides companies the ability to send encoded seven digit numbers in a barcode picture message, readable by standard barcode readers. Along with the barcode a 120 character text message can be sent giving description of the offer in the barcode.

Mr. Vijay Shukla, Country Head, ValueFirst messaging, said, “the service is likely to have a high acceptance among organized retailers, multiplexes, and other sales-led companies. Marketers can now design various contests, promotions, invitations for events around this service”.

Some of the interesting applications of mobile barcode are to send encoded discount offers to the customers which get revealed to them once they visit the point of sale, sending invitations and tickets to events/ concerts to the enlisted members.