What is going to increase GPRS usage in India?
Yesterday after attending the Mumbai Chapter of May Mobile Monday, VeerChand Bothra (VP – Marketing & Alliances, Netcore Solutions), Gautam and I had this rather interesting conversation about ‘What is it going to take to explode GPRS usage in India?’
Indian GSM mobile phone service providers signed up a record 6.1 million customers in March, taking total users to 121.4 million. (Via: Financial Express)
121.4 million GSM users, that is pretty massive! That’s a lot of handsets around!
During yesterday’s panel discussion one got some nice figures…
50-60 million of these 121.4 million GSM users have data capable phones.
10-15 million of these users actually know what is GPRS and have at some point used their phone to access data.
2-3 million of these have used it more than once and use it predominantly to download wallpapers, ringtones etc.
0.2 million of these use GPRS to regularly access Email on their mobiles and can be termed as active users of GPRS.
So from 121.4 million we are down to 0.2 million. That is pretty pathetic.
The potential and scope is there to be seen, but what is the one thing which is going to make everyone shift and explore the world of GPRS and WAP? There has to be one killer application behind the whole thing which will actually make sense to the end users. Something simple but yet striking! Something for which they won’t mind enabling GPRS on their phones. Something for which they would be willing to go through the minor initial pains to get comfortable with the WAP culture.
Google! They have the muscle power and via their social networking product Orkut they can actually be the pioneering GPRS revolutionaries in India!
But How?
We have repeatedly talked about the growth of orkut in India.
They’ve become so huge and popular that they even got the Police worried.
Orkut gets around 7+ Lakh registrations from India each month – unbelievable growth!
What if Orkut were to release a WAP based version, via which all phones having GPRS capabilities would be able to access it?
Scrapping, searching for friends, accessing forums and polls in communities etc..
WAT Consult is currently conducting a user behaviour research – where we are tracking the online user behaviour of a couple of 100 people in various cities across India. When we asked them if they would like a scrapping widget (Via which they would be able to read and reply to scraps) of sorts on their phones, none seemed keen.
“We rather send SMS’s to each other than use our mobiles to scrap! Unless it is free”
Another said, “When I’m on orkut, half the time I’m reading my friends’ scrapbook – if that was possible via my mobile it would rock”
The above point of view perfectly summarises the voyeuristic attitude of today’s youth.
Enabling free scrapping, viewing albums, participating in communities, surfing profiles etc would definitely be a killer app which could move hordes of people on to their mobiles.
Orkutting has almost become as popular as Googling in India. I can imagine students sitting in long boring lectures, orkutting away on their phones. People orkutting away in Buses, Taxis, Local Trains etc
Google would have immense mobile advertising options opening up once this rolls and they can definitely dominate the Mobile advertising space, which is pretty much in its infancy in India (I’m not talking about SPAM sms’s here). The prospects of targeted local ads is immense.
Many social networks are planning a sound mobile strategy. indyarocks, Yaari etc all have some sort of mobile social networking already rolling but nothing too fancy.
Why only Orkut can really explode the scene? Because they already have the numbers.
Please do share your views and comments
A WAT Consult perspective by Ekalavya Bhattacharya
Note: The above picture is just a imaginary graphic representation of what a WAP version of Orkut might look like.
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Is that a photoshop feature or an application you have created?
Hi brandy,
its is just a graphic representation of what we feel a WAP version of Orkut might look like.
Have added a Note at the base now.
Cheers,
Ekalavya
One killer app — Youtube on mobile
) Orkut reaches only educated youth(though market is high) but to reach rural market youtube is a much bigger market.Esp with video phones, Mo'Youtube can be a explosion in years to come.
All said, at the end of the day,its the tariff that matters.49/99/375 Rs is too costly for a net savvy person to have GPRS on mobile especially when he gets broadband at just 250 Rs.Basically rates have to come down and it just needs one operator to slash it down.Yahoo enjoys a better relationship with indian GPRS scene.Google is missing a huge market.And the app has to free(with ads) unlike yahoo which went for subscription for mail and chat after few free months.And what about EDGE connectivity? Are indian networks/content providers ready for it? I like to read WAT reviewing the EDGE/Video streaming on mobile arena. When we will have a person watching his/her favorite TV channels while traveling in train. Guess the day is not too far..
Hi Srikanth,
Video streaming over the phone is definitely the next big thing and we did review around 20 YouTube clones on WATblog just last week. Do have a look at that post –
http://www.watblog.com/?content=detail&id=677
We'll definitely cover EDGE in the future. As far as pricing is concerned, i know it is still pretty expensive but you might be shocked to know that Indian GPRS rates are almost the cheapest in the world.
Cheers,
Ekalavya
Nice photoshopping. Looks neat and simple. Perhaps profile properties can be optional.
But to access and read scraps of other friends will make the page bulky? Or can there be a simpler situation?
Perhaps allow rss subscriptions to rss feeds of ones scrap book!
BigAdda has launched finally. No hint of mobile networking at all. Nothing spectacular. Pretty dissapointing.
Waiting for a WATblog review soon
that is interesting ekalavya. but that would be like subscribing to someones emails. don't think that would be allowed at all.
but a 3rd party can perhaps automatically save and pipe through the latest scraps for a cost. social spying
it was nice to discover this interesting string, have any of you heard of Rocketalk. its a mobile phone based social networking application. the power lies in its simplicity of use, it let the user send voice picture text and vedio messages across to friends . the bita version can be downloaded from pointing your phone brower to http://www.rocketalk.com. we will be bringing out a complete version sometime in march this year. some of the improvement we will introduce will be vedio streaming and compression and definatly a certified application from Ui point of veiw.
I have heard of Rocketalk.Infact i had been using it since last month and i love the application. It is saving me a lot of money . I dont even know how many audio, video msgs i send in a day to my friends.
Fabulous