Interview With Mr. Pratapa Bernard From OnMobile On Their Developer Network
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OnMobile, India’s leading Mobile Value Added Services(VAS) player recently announced launching of their own Developer Network. Everyone agrees its great news for entrepreneurs / content creators, as it will give them an opportunity to reach out to ONMobile’s market easily. WATBlog decided to approach OnMobile and get complete details about their Developer Network.
Mr. Pratapa Bernard, Head of Marketing & Products, OnMobile Global Ltd spoke to WATBlog. Here is the interview :-
WATBlog :What is OnMobile developer network all about?
Value Added Services in India and other Emerging Markets include SMS, WAP and Speech-enabled services. Speech enabled services are hugely popular as its very easy to use, services can be offered in the local language and available on all mobiles (users only need to make a call). Whereas SMS and WAP services are relatively simple to develop, Speech applications can be quite complex and require specialized skills.
OnMobile has been very successful in rolling out Speech services on its Multi Modal Platform, MMP2500. This platform has also been deployed across all mobile operators in India as well as in several networks internationally. The latest (and current) version of this platform, called Ozone, provides an industry standards based environment for developing and deploying Speech services. Amongst others, Ozone supports VoiceXML and GrXML. The standards approach ensures that any developer who has sufficient XML skill sets will be able to develop Speech applications with a little bit of training, thus enabling a larger development community to address the Indian and emerging markets mobile population.
To further simplify the development process, OnMobile has also introduced a Speech applications Development Kit (SDK). With this SDK, developers will be able to quickly create Speech enabled applications on a standalone system, validate the application performance and then deploy it on an Operator environment. With the SDK, the technology barrier to developing Speech services has been dramatically lowered.
When developers register and become a part of the OnMobile Developer Network program, they get full access to this SDK. The SDK comes bundled with the Indian language model, enabling them to build speech services for the fast growing Indian market. Additionally, developers can also avail of associated services like UI design, Studio resources, Audio Engineering expertise, VoiceXML training and many other specialized capabilities from OnMobile.
WATBlog : How do users benefit from it?
The rapid growth in the Indian mobile industry provides immense opportunity. However, the diversity of the market in terms of language, local culture, tradition, lifestyle, etc., makes it very fragmented and thereby limits scale economies. While it becomes difficult for large players to cater to every local need, these requirements can be served by local developer organizations.
However, the complexity of developing speech applications had been a barrier in the past. The creation of the OnMobile Developer Network program, will enable a large community of developers in the local market to offer targeted and specialized speech applications.
Thereby, both the consumer and businesses benefit from the Developer Network program.
WATBlog : How do developers benefit from this?
Developing Speech services was (and still is) a specialized skill and required significant investment in terms of people and technology resources. Diversity of language and Voice UI complexity meant that knowledge base was always in short supply. Deployment of Speech applications in the Operator network was an even more challenging affair, with complex network integration and large investments in system infrastructure.
With the OnMobile SDK, Developers could now create Speech applications using standards based technology and skill set required are more readily available. Further, developers can now use the Ozone platform deployed by OnMobile in the Operator networks to make their applications available to the end consumer, thereby eliminating one of the biggest barriers to taking their services to market.
WATBlog:What is the revenue model for developers, if any?
When the applications are rolled out in the Operator network and used by the mobile consumer, Developers get a share of the revenue earned by the Operator. The quantum of revenue share is directly negotiated between the Developer and the Operator
WATBlog: How does OnMobile benefit from this?
The idea and intent behind the OnMobile Developer Network is to enable a wider community of developers to create and deploy Speech enabled services and cater to diverse needs of the Indian mobile consumer. In doing so, the popularity, relevance and richness of Speech applications will grow in the market. With more players offering speech enabled mobile services, consumers will be the ultimate beneficiary and get to avail of services that they desire.
Developers also have the option to deploy their services on OnMobile’s Ozone platform that is deployed in the Operator’s network. This will increase the traffic serviced by the platform.
That concludes the interview with Pratapa Bernard. We thank him for such a detailed response for our queries and wish OnMobile all the success for this project. Do check out more such interesting interviews here.
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