Update: Sep 16th 2011 – More detailed article here.
With impending blockage of SMS spam from 27th September, and requirement of reconfirmation of subscription at every renewal, there is a potential for large scale shift in Mobile VAS. The two “facilities” mentioned above have led to a business model for VAS driven by push and dubious billing. The owner of customer databases land up being the king – service innovation is only as valuable as the marketing push one can provide behind it, in competition to every other service.
If indeed the above mechanisms are implemented well, VAS has the potential to become a pull business rather than a push business. It might mean that innovations that create and meet real consumer demand acquire premium, and distribution channels have to align to those innovations rather than the other way round.
While this may mean short term compromise in revenue, ultimately this might create an innovation driven VAS ecosystem. Perhaps good news for entrepreneurs who have been clamoring for a more level playing field – if they can meet the innovation challenge.
Thoughts?
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Nice article. VAS certainly has a lot of potential and maybe the innovation has been a little curtailed because of the operators. On the other hand new technologies are certainly helping create innovative VAS applications without depending on the operators for distribution.Mashups have certainly enabled this as can be seen from the 150+ mashups of Twilio (http://www.programmableweb.com/api/twilio/mashups). We have also seen some innovative stuff being built on our platform KooKoo, http://www.kookoo.in like http://www.kookoo.in/voicebuzz which allows you to post to Facebook from any phone. Interesting times ahead.
i have been waiting for a significant shift in the indian VAS ecosystem which was stifling innovation
lets see how this pans out
gp
The potential of Pull based VAS is much greater than Push based because:
1. Push is generally taken as invasion in privacy.
2. Only 1% of turn around rate due to non-targeting of data.
3. Not everyone really like to read SMS starts from LM, TD, TM
4. Push based marketing ruined the customer mindset, now even a genuine SMS regarding the services you already availed are termed as SPAM.
on the other hand Pull based data is only accessed by the parties who are really interested. Some people argue that pull based VAS is very costly but that is not the case. For example we provide Missed Call based services where customer just need to give a missed call on a pre-defined number to access the content.
While you make a good case for fair competition encouraging innovation, I doubt if VAS have much time left to deliver. With increasing capability of phones and increasing penetration of such devices, the value added by VAS is being fast eroded. There might be a case for the huge rural market in the current scenario, but the window of opportunity spans just 2-3 more years.
So the challenge – can the existing or new players innovate so rapidly and bring this to market as rapidly? And will this window be enough to monetize the value created through their innovation? I have serious doubts.
Absolutely sir, now they will have to really make it interesting and make it engaged communication than the SMS spamming it has been!