In December 2009, mobile data traffic (surfing the net, checking email, exploring social networks etc.) officially exceeded the volume of voice calls across the world’s wireless networks for the first time. Global data traffic has nearly tripled in each of the last few years with some 400 million mobile broadband subscribers generating more traffic than 4.6 Billion voice subscribers. Mobile data usage has been primarily fueled through the increased market penetration of smartphones which increased its market share from 11% in 2008 to 17% in 2009, and the rise in social media access via mobile phones. 3G phone ownership increased from 32% to 43% from 2008 to 2009.
As expected, Indian and Chinese consumers are expected to lead growth in this sector, with mobile users in India expected to increase from 600 Million to over 1 Billion by 2014. Â Even assuming a modest penetration of 15% for smartphones in the Indian market by 2015, that would mean 150 Million mobile subscribers eagerly consuming data traffic. Worldwide mobile data usage is expected to double each year as better smartphones become available and better networks are built and it should be no different in India. Â The fact that more Indian mobile users are likely to embrace mobile as a platform for uses beyond just making phone calls, opens up a great number of venture opportunities. To me, the mobile platform offers the same type of opportunities to businesses that the internet provided in 1990s. It has the potential to spawn new businesses and differentiated business models, open up new channels for web services, online, as well as brick and mortar companies and could provide huge efficiencies and improvements in business operations and employee productivity.
Here are some thoughts. There are opportunities for greenfield mobile product startups that make everyday life easier for people on the go – read iPhone or Android apps. One could also think of a mobile centric product strategy for web services and online internet based businesses leveraging the true potential of the mobile platform (location based services, push technology, availability of mobile storage space etc.). Mobile could be used as a platform for brick and mortar businesses – e.g. online coupons, mobile marketing for retailers and CPG companies, mobile payment platforms etc. By no means is this an exhaustive list, but the key point here is that there is a great opportunity for entrepreneurs to create a new ecosystem of businesses using mobile as a platform. The infrastructure (3G) is being built, the market exists and consumers are asking for it.
Would love to hear your thoughts on venture opportunities in the mobile space in India – what ideas will work, what won’t and why? Have a great weekend.
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I guess this would have been the same situation and assumptions when Internet was hitting India big time. But till dats it is fighting to take off.
Given the poor internet infrastructure and low bandwidth, internet still hasn’t taken off in India like the way it has in developed countries. And that’s where mobile can make significant impact. Given the mobile penetration and the arrival of 3G, surfing net on mobile may prove to be cheaper and faster than on PC. And in such a scenario, the market for mobile apps appears very exciting. In addition, with the arrival of 3G it will be easier to bypass network operators and feed contents directly to the end users.
In terms of the applications, I think LBS are interesting. Google is already working on LBS and sooner than later other major players like yelp, foursquare etc may also start showing their presence in India. Another exciting field is ad network/network. Rich apps certainly going to drive advertisers to mobile platform, and it will ultimately need an efficient and localized ad exchange.
I think a key issue (and opportunity) globally on the mobile is around fragmentation of the mobile landscape itself – between diversity in handsets, operating systems, carrier capabilities and the like, there isn’t really “one platform”. It is possible that the world converges around 2-3 OS platforms quickly (iphone, android, MS, etc), but device and carrier differences would remain, or even grow.
In that sense, mobile web might be more interesting as a general purpose platform, and apps might be a good business for few large platform configurations. And for many things, voice and SMS should continue to work well – especially for non-smartphone audience.
This is one of the co-founders of MarketSimplified, a tech startup that provides mobile trading platform to major stock brokerages that are traditionally brick and mortar.
While we had considerable success to the extent of being today the largest mobility provider for brokerages in US, we had to wait to enter our own home market – India to open up, first with data plans for GPRS, which until very recently were highly priced, now major networks offer unlimited 2g data for less than Rs.100; Second market regulators did not allow actual trade transaction to be allowed over a phone, which is even true today, but it is expected to be liberalized with the 3G roll out.
This year marks the turn of mobile platforms as a major channel to access over half a billion customers that use mobile phone in India and this we do believe holds significant portion of our revenues to arise of out India than elsewhere in the world.
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In India, one of the challenge for the growth of Data services is the availability of back-end data sources (For ex: locational services on mobile need back-end databases to pool such data). Lack of such infrastructure will hamper the growth of Mobile VAS/data services in India.