Event roundup - SiliconIndia Mobile Applications Conference 2009
India as a region that has had a higher penetration rate of mobile phones than the internet & this is certainly an area that is not only growing rapidly but has a dirth of socially impactful, easy to use consumer applications. The "me too" applications with a 100% reliance on ads has failed & continues to draw a lot of suspicion towards monetizing via advertisements. It was an interesting day kick started by Aravind Rao with a coverage of what & how startups & other mobile application developers in India can build & sell mobile applications. There is more coverage provided by Rajiv of WATBlog on Arvind Rao's talk here.
There was a lot covered about AppStores & their benefits to developers across all the discussions & talks. Appstores are certainly here to stay and are a quick application delivery & distribution channel for all developers.
Opinions - Its evident that the VAS opportunities in the country are huge. As ARPU declines, the challenge for operators is to increase revenues by differentiating their offerings and develop alternative revenue streams by offering more value added services to the existing subscribers & finding better means of consumer outreach., to stay in the game.
VAS is the way to go what with one 3G service launched & more looming. Content providers are key here to ensure that they have intelligent means to find out how to provide highly customized, relevant & contextual content to the large & ever expanding consumer base. While UI design for mobile is important, the reality today is that more content delivered is SMS based & it needs to be provided in a manner so as to support low-end handsets as well. One of the speakers mentioned the ABCDs of most popular content in India as - Astrology, Bollywood, Cricket & Devotion ! This has been the case for the last several years & any associated content still has a large & highly interested consumer base even today. Further, social enterprises are still lacking in the region which is again a greenfield opportunity. With mobiles being ubiquitous as they are today, network services being enhanced by operators, the mobile is certainly the one quick delivery mechanism for app vendors. This is an area certainly worth exploring & investing in. I was surprised that the speakers didn't bring up too much of this aspect.
A very detailed on Mobile VAS in India is available here.
Posted at 10:56AM Nov 04, 2009 by Aparna Kumar in Sun | Comments[0]