LTE route to 4G Migration

This article titled "LTE route to 4G Migration" appeared in The Hindu BusinessLine Business daily on 21-Mar-2011. The article tries to look at the global LTE trends and India’s Mobile Broadband options. Although research reports suggest 5 fold increase in India’s Broadband users, availability of affordable handsets, Tariff and meaningful content are the major challenges.

Pl click on the image to read as printed in the news paper OR Pl click the linkLTE route to 4G Migration

Getting new caller Tunes for BSNL

This article co-authored by Dr Sridhar and I, titled Getting new caller Tunes for BSNL has appeared in the Editorial page of Financial Express Dated 9-Mar-2011

Pl click on the image to read as printed in the news paper OR Pl click the linkGetting new caller Tunes for BSNL

Global Mobile Awards 2011 and the winners are....

BEST MOBILE DEVICE : Apple for iPhone 4

DEVICE MANUFACTURER OF THE YEAR: HTC

BEST MOBILE APP: Rovio / Clickgamer/Chillingo for Angry Birds

GREEN MOBILE AWARD FOR BEST GREEN

PRODUCT/SERVICE OR PERFORMANCE: Bharti Infratel for GreenTowers P7 Project

BEST CUSTOMER CARE & CRM: Airtel Africa and Tango Telecom for Tango Telecom’s ‘Dynamic Pricing Service

BEST MOBILE MONEY PRODUCT OR SOLUTION: Airtel Africa, MasterCard Worldwide and Standard Chartered Bank for Airtel Card

Solar power for Towers and local community

a few months back Ncell, Teliasonera's subsidiary in Nepal installed a Solar powered 3G Tower at teh Basecamp. Telcos have started
focusing more on alternate source for powering the Towers - solar and wind.

Infact with the Basestations becoming energy efficient, companies in some countries will soon provide excess power generated by their base stationsto local communities. Thats an excllent initiatve?

MNP - Finally Launched

With not much of comparison between the large Operators in terms of Quality of service, the euphoria on MNP will die down soon. The operators will focus on the the post paid subscribers, who account for just over 4% of the 700 Million Subscribers. The Post paid ARPU is over Rs 500/-. Forget adding new subscribers, Telcos dont want to lose existing ones :)

mHealth : Short Messages to Healthcare

My article titled "Short Messages to Healthcare" appeared in the Financial Chronicle on 11th Jan 2011. The article tries to cover the three key mediums ( Voice, Multimedia and Apps & SMS) through which Healthcare can be addressed.

Pl click on the image to read the print version of the article OR OR follow the the link mHealth: Short Messages to Health Care

Low end phone market in India

G-Five is a Top sellign brand in India. Lava, Onida, Hansum and others are selling few lakhs to a million phone every month. All the phones imported have CE certification and thats good enough to sell in India!
No wonder there are over 100 local brands already. This is just going to only grow further in 2011.

Phones with a Mind

My article titled "Phones with a Mind" appeared in the Financial Chronicle on 26th October 2010. Click on the image to read the article as printed OR follow the the link Phones with a Mind

Battery life

Battery life of Handset and Tablets will be the next big area for innovation. I saw a solar powered sharp phone recently. Some well funded global go-green initiative is required for some breakthrough. Telecom regulators in all countries should encourage OEMs to use Eco friendly mechanism. Charging from any “light”, not limited to sunlight. Hope to see some breakthrough in Kinetic energy based charging OR Charging through the Antenna.

MicroMax effect - Is it here to stay

Micromax is the 3rd largest phone seller in India after Nokia and Samsung. It is not surprising that the Tier3 brands ( Micromax, Karbonn, Lava,Olive etc) have over 17% market share comaped to 1% last year!

But will they survive especially with Yuan raising and I also hear about salary costs of Chinese production companies going up. Already sensing these issues, production houses have started to move to Vietnam.

MediaTek, the taiwanese chipset maker thriving on the chinese grey market and the Indian brands like Micromax has sold over 500 Million chipsets!

The fact that cost arbitrage will soon vanish, the Tier 3 brands have a tough task ahead to displace Nokia or Samsung

Call of Convergence: Smartphone as a "Connected Device"

My  article  on "Smartphone as a connected device" appeared in in the Hindu Business Line (13th Sep 2010). Have tried to look at Innovation and Convergence as key drivers for the future of Smartphone. The article also discusses the potential for smartphones in Home entertainment and Automotive segments.

Click on the image to read the article as printed OR follow the the link Call of Convergence

Connected Devices

Everything from the Smartphone to any of the consumer electronics devices ( TV , Camera etc) are part of the larger Connected Devices universe.

I recently read an interesting article in the Financial Times about Google and Apple aggresively trying to gain entry into the Smart TV space ( TV + Web connection)and offer OTT ( Over the Top) services. It looks like US will be a huge market. All Google and Apple products are lapped-up by conusmers in USA ( at least for now). This is like the Microsoft wave during the late nineties.

Home and "In-car" entertainment segments would be the key drivers for the next 3-5 years.