Apple will be No 2 in Smartphone sales shortly

Apple which started with just about 5% Market share towards end of 2007, has grabbed over 17% of the market share in Q3 2009.

Nokia's share is rapidly sliding from higher than 60% to around 40% last quarter.
RIM is sandwiched between Nokia and Apple for many quarters now and will be pushed to No 3 slot within the next 6 months ( if not earlier!)

Penetration of Smartphone in India will take some time. Today it is SMART PHONE FOR SMART PEOPLE.... :)

Will Rural India benefit from the Mobile Boom

My article on Mobile Applications for rural India appeared under Economy and Business, Deccan Herald : 26th Oct 2009

Rural India has played an important role in India’s overall economic growth. In fact, rural India accounts for 70% of India’s population, 56% of income, 64% of expenditure and 33% of savings, as per ICRIER (Indian Council of Research on International Economic Relations) Jan 2009 report. Mobile communication, by bridging the digital divide has revolutionized the social and economic life across the rural and semi-urban areas and Mobile phones represent the world's largest distribution platform. “The mobile phone market is especially important for developing countries, where it is growing most rapidly and where it is seen as a "leapfrogging" tool” states a 2009 World Bank report on Information and communication......


Click on the image to read the article as printed OR follow the the link Rural India can Immensely benefit from teh Mobile Boom

Per-second billing

Who would have imagined that Per Second billing (PSB) introduced by DoCoMo ( with all the catchy advertisments!)would be a trigger for the Telecom Stocks to tumble!

TRAI which initially said that the PSB is mandatory , now has done a u-turn confirming that it is just an option!

For all the Post paid subscribers ( which should be about 10% of the overall MObile Market. Yes! India has around 90% Pre-paid connections!!!), per-second billing may not make too much of a difference

TRAI will come-up with a consultation paper over the next 45 days and needs to be seen what exactly does the TRAI reccommend

Should there be changes to Landline billing as well?

The M in Learning

The mobile phone can enable learning in a developing country such as India where its usage is growing by leaps and bounds.. This is article that I co-authored with Dr Sridhar. This article appeared in the Hindu Business Line (5th October 2009).

Click on the image to read the article as printed OR follow the the link The M in Learning

Estimating connectivity in Rural India

TRAI has initiated actions in the right direction by creating an exhaustive list of all the villages in India and has recently created a format for collecting information from Service Providers in order to estimate the available connectivity (Coaxial Cable, Optical Fiber Connectivity, Wire line and Wireless) in Rural Areas. The Major Telecom operators in India provide Mobile and Broadband services. Considering characteristics like coverage, ease of deployment and cost, a decent mix of technologies like optic fibre, WiMax and 3G should help mobile and broadband penetration increase many folds in the rural India.

4B USD USOF.

With the Empowered Group of Ministers (EGoM) setting a higher base price for 3G spectrum and the Telecommunications minister confident of getting the Auction process through within the next 90 days, there is certainly going to be a lot of excitement in the coming days.

The Universal Service Obligation Fund (USOF) held by the Government of India, which is an accumulation of a small percentage of the revenue generated by the Mobile operators, has grown into over $4 Billion. With over 70% of India being largely rural, it is appropriate that the Government starts effectively deploying the USOF to improve m-literacy among the youth in rural India. Government, by providing subsidies should encourage the Telecom Operators to work with local administration and Distance education providers to achieve 100% m-literacy across the villages/Towns. The Telcos will have access to “m-literate” rural population, which certainly would help in improving ARPU.

440M and going strong

Overall Teledensity has crossed 41%. 10M subscribers are added everymonth and the overall subscriber base is just increasing like a Taxi meter:)
Max growth in the C Circle, which is expected.

I really wish India's Literacy rate also grows like this :) With the Mobile revolution coupled with easy access to Internet, and lots of e-learning institues that goverment is supproting, lets hope the literacy rate goes up!

M&A in Wireless Industry

The latest one on the block was Nortel....! Well, I feel the FIVE major players in the Wireless Industry are...
Semiconductor Industry -> The likes of NXP,ST,EMP (i.e ST-E) , TI, Broadcom(?) etc
Handset Manufacturers (OEM/ODM) -> Compal,Quanta, Nokia, Sony Ericsson etc
Handset Enablers! -> Symbian(Nokia), Android(Google), Windows Mobile (Microsoft)
Network Manufacturers ->Siemens,Nokia,Nortel, ( Nokia-Seimens), Alcatel,Lucent (ALU), Huawei
Network Operators -> Vodafone,T-Mobile, Airtel etc and
of course, how can we ignore the subscribers ( Like you and me!!) who keep all the above 5 guessing!!!!

Who would have imagined so many JVs/take-overs/mergers in this Industry alone. Will someone swallow Motorola ( At least the Handset group) OR will Sanjay show us some Magic!!

Have the M&As helped the new entities become profitable?

It would be interesting to see the HHI ( Herfindahl Hirschman Index) which is considered to be a good indicator of healthy competition within a country. In India, the HHI for the Operators is around 0.2. Not bad I guess. (0.15 to 0.17 is the best!)

Stable Government, what next?

Who imagined UPA to get such an emphatic win this time around! With UPA in full control, personally I would like to see some of the sick PSUs like ITI ( Indian Telephone Industries) revived. Stake sale OR someone like Tata OR Reliance to buy it out. It is such a pity to see ITI( once considered as a preimiere organization) slowly but steadily drowning!

Is it Raja OR Maran. Well! DMK appears to be destined to be driving the 3G Auction:-) . I hope the 3G auctions will be through soon.

India's next 100 Million subscribers!

According to a recent TRAI report, rural tele-density is about 12% while urban tele-density is 82%. China , for instance has more than 35% rural tele-density!
Next 100 OR 200 Million subscribers should indeed come from Rural and Semi-urban India! Operators will have to make innovative pitches to attract the rural India. Although the sentiment is negative due to the global recession and deflation here, I believe there is enough scope for growth in rural India. Operators need to pray for Adequate rainfall this year and the coming years :)

Will 3G make Biz Sense?

At the outset, I would like to thank my good friend B.S Murthy, CEO of leadership Capital and Mr Dilip, Editor at Deccan Herald for their support!!!

At least for the last 6 months, I have been wondering how 3G would fare in India. It was a wonderful experience right from my thought to write an article followed by gathering data, analysing and coming up with the draft version. Dr Sridhar ( a veteran of over 75 articles) helped in "weaving" the story together. The initial version was about 800 words and then we raised it to 998 words. Perhaps the only time I kept a close watch on the Word count provided in MS word:-) I must admit stuffing in "English" was not an easy task. It was absolutely unbelievable to see that the article (including title) getting published as-is unedited!!!
The response has been tremendous. Thanks to all the people who have sent their appreciation on the article. It is indeed a great feeling when you get appreciation mails from Unknown people. Definitely motivates me to try to write more articles.

Most of friends were more interested to know about the girl in the picture. Boyz will remain Boyz:-). BTW, let me re-assure all my friends that I had no role to play in choosing the picture.. Apparently, the editor spent a couple of hours in deciding the picture. Awesome.... eh...phone? :)

Click on the above image to read the article as printed OR follow the the link Will 3G make Biz Sense for e-version.

What next?

BSNL launches 3G

BSNL soft launching 3G will definitely get the other operators furious. The delay in Auctioning process and yet allowing BSNL to launch may give BSNL some undue advantage. This is true especially if the operators are allowed to roll out only in 2010.

3G- What is expected in India now?

Nothing much at least until the elections are through. Now with the global slowdown deepening by the day and considering this may not be the top most priority for the new Government, maybe the Auction would move into 2010. I hope my prediction is proven wrong.The best best is if the GoM tries to hurry-up the process and start the auctioning process immediately. But this looks very unlikely

The delay is similar to the TDS-CDMA spectrum allotment in China. After such a long wait, people started calling it as "T(edious) CDMA :)

Text Messaging. A Gold mine for operators

At the outset let me wish you a very happy and prosperous new year 2009!

I chanced upon an interesting article that a friend of mine sent... Approximately 2.5 Trillion Text messages (OR more popularly SMS) have been sent in 2008 world wide. This is expected to be 3.3 Trillion 2009.
What does it take for the Operators to transmit the text messages? close to nothing.. Why? Because the text message is capped at 160 characters and the transmission is on the control channel. Control channel is required for the handset to be "in touch" with the nearest Wireless Tower. Essentially, the control channel is required even if no text message is transmitted. Also, if you send or receive SMS while on a call , the SMS will be transmitted on the same voice channel. Again no additional overhead!!

As you are aware, most operators in the world depending on the country, charge any where between 15 to 20USD per Month unlimited SMS . It is extremely attractive for the subscribers. WoW that's very tempting like the "eat-as-much-as-you-can" OR unlimited food popular in restaurants.

The operators will surely be thanking all the subscribers in making SMS so successful as it adds to their bottom line! No wonder some of the well run Operators' Operating margin is in excess of 35%!!!