Nimbuzz Ties Up With Spice Mobile For Distribution Deal – Bundling the only option for Mobile Apps?

Price Waterhouse Coopers reports the Indian mobile VAS market will reach $2 billion by the end of 2008 and expect it to account for 18% of operator revenue by 2010. So its no surprise that Nimbuzz a Dutch mobile instant messaging and VoIP provider is very gung ho about the Indian Market. Nimbuzz which we blogged about earlier as well has tied up with Spice mobiles for a major distribution deal. As per this tie up from December onwards most of the new Java and Windows Mobile handsets of Spice mobile will be rolled out to the Indian market with the full Nimbuzz communication portfolio installed.

 
The same would also be marketed by Spice mobiles through its website, wap portal and its retail outlets. Nimbuzz has been in the news ever since its funding announcement for either tying up with operators or launching apps for the iphone to even powering social networks mobile presence. 
 
The Spice Mobiles deal is a global contract for nImbuzz so pre-installed Spice Mobiles devices will be sold in other APAC territories as well.  

This isn’t the first bundling deal for the Indian market when it comes to mobile apps. even earlier RockeTalk had tied up with LG for a similar deal in India. The question that needs to be asked is is bundling with a handset maker the only way to increase distribution? Also does it even guarantee usage? After all I may have 100 apps on my phone but I may use 3-4 only while the rest are just there.

Even though India is the fastest growing mobile market with 300+ mobile subscribers growing at 10 million a month and GPRS users pegged at 15 odd million still there is no mobile app for communition that has yet made it big in India. What remains to be seen is whether users in India take to gprs for app usages (and not only for ringtone download) in a big way. Because the fate of a lot of mobile app developers would depend on that.