SMS Based IM, Social networking – The Next Killer App For Indian Mobile?
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Couple of years ago I stumbled on an idea of SMS based IM and social networking, though the idea gave me goose bumps with the extent of potential market, I was eventually convinced that mobile internet will be the thing, partly because I was already working on a mobile internet based idea and left only repenting now.
Nokia Research and other’s (including a San Deigo based startup called ShorthandMobile) are reportedly working on text based IM and Social networking applications. This is a smart move on part of Nokia, because India which is the second largest market for the company has a great penetration of SMS services and SMS based IM/Social networking might just be the next killer application for this market.
“We Meet”, the first product of this kind to be rolled out by Nokia reportedly could be used by families, groups of friends or small businesses. Users can create chat groups from their contact lists and communicate by sending text messages. The software “threads” the messages in chronological order, making it easy to follow the conversation. The best part of the application will be it’s location awareness without the use of GPS,which will be a great value addition to the mid to low segment phones which form a greater segment of the mobile device market. “We want to bring Internet-type services to people and see how they adopt them,” says Nokia researcher Umesh Chandra as quoted by Forbes.
With no chasm to cross and with a market where there’s a great preference for SMS to Mobile Internet, text based IM/Social networking forms a strong contender for the next Killer Application on Mobile and what will make “We meet” more than interesting is it’s device presence.
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I am not sure if SMS could be actually be a Killer Application for IM! I think it is available on Yahoo IM for many years now. I find it difficult to type on a mobile phone. Also, almost all SMS VAS charged Rs. 3 per SMS. Paying Rs. 3 for some updates of 140 characters seems quite costly for me. Most probably, cheaper SMS rate may help.
SMS based social networking applications are BIG as far as mobile data usage is concerned. Prohibitory GPRS pricing and ease of SMS usage are the factors leading upto this.The icing on the cake are the location pointer services using the cell towers.
I was aware that Airtel was doing some activity on this front which subsequently never materialised. Now Nokia take the high ground in pioneer this service in India.The least that Telcos can do is to make VAS SMS services cheaper for the trend to take over.
In hindsight, in these times of hyper competition and price wars, Telcos could have done so much better in managing their ARPU through their data services.Instead, we still are looking at net subs additions and freely falling ARPUs.
@ronnie, interesting point but I believe this has more to do than just SMS and in India it is more of a Device manufacturers game than Telcos.
Agree Pradeep. Data is more than just SMS. But the point being made here is that SMS is the simplest data service possible in India. GPRS and others will have some gestation before going mass.
w.r.t Device manufacturers versus Telcos: I thought that Telcos controlling the full medium of content and delivery were more dominant worldover.