Smile Interactive does a Phirki into Mobile Portals

Smile Interactive the company that owns the interactive agency Quasar, the travel search engine zoomtra and the ad network tyroo is all set to launch its first foray into the mobile space by launching a mobile portal phirki.mobi.

Recently we wrote about the survey which mentioned the increase in the use of internet through mobiles and this announcement by Smile interactive seems to have come at the right time if that survey has to be believed which states that 9% of the total internet users on mobile are Indians.

According to Mahendra Swarup, chief mentor of Smile Interactive Technologies the mobile portal will have entertainment, news and search elements, similar to online portals. They are also planning a mobile social networking service, which will be SMS-based along with adding m-commerce services on the portal, which will be operator-neutral and accessible on any GPRS or web-enabled phone, whether CDMA or GSM.

He also told agencyfaqs that the group is looking for five to six independent companies in the social networking, mobile advertising and mobile VAS delivery space that can be incubated.

I think the key to making phirki successful is how user friendly do they make the site for mobile users.

As this article states that site design is the most crucial aspect where mobile internet is concerned. There are already a few players mushrooming in the mobile internet space like Frenzo.in which is into mobile social networking and claims to have more than 50000 users.

Mobile content providers like Onmobile and Mobile2win also feel that design aspects would be crucial to success in the web on mobile space. Arvind Rao of OnMobile says “A good WAP site should adhere to the 3Cs – cost, content and context. It’s an arduous task to customise the tools on a tiny screen, so it’s important to give users as much relevant content as possible in the given space.”

For those of you who cannot affiord to build a wap enabled site but would like to have a profile or a site on the internet that can be accessed by anyone there is a solution in winksite.com a site that enables you to create your own content thats mobile enabled.

All in all I think this is a very good move by Smile as there is hardly anyone in India thats focusing on a mobile portal sort of a model. Also i do hope they pick the right startups to incubate in the internet space.