Nokia plans to foray into the dual SIM handset market in India with the launch of its first dual SIM device by September end this year.
“Globally, C1 and C2, dual SIM mobile from Nokia, are already available. In India we’ll launch our dual SIM device in this quarter,” said V Ramnath, director, operator business, Nokia India.
The dual SIM devices market is pegged at about Rs 2,200 crore annually and is the fastest growing segment of the handset industry.
The Finnish handset giant had earlier globally unveiled its C series mobile phones in June.
The C1 is expected to be launched in the third quarter, while C2 is expected to be made available in quarter four.
C1 will allow the user to carry two SIM cards, while only one can be activated at a time. On the other hand, C2 will support both SIMs working simultaneously.
While the Nokia C1 will be priced at approximately Rs 1,750; the C2 will be priced at around Rs 2,500.
Ramnath also said that the Ovi Store for India will be launched very soon.
Once the India version of the Nokia Ovi App store is launched, users will be able to make payments for the applications they download in Indian Rupees. Currently, prices shown for applications are in Euros.
The store will also have Indian rich media content.
Nokia to launch dual SIM handset by Sept end
RCom to offer Nokia’s Ovi Life Tools services
Telecom service provider Reliance Communications (RCom) has announced its partnership with mobile handset maker Nokia India for jointly offering Ovi Life Tools services.
Ovi Life Tools is a set of mobile information and application services, covering crop prices, education, health, games, maps, music and entertainment.
“These services have the potential to positively impact livelihoods at one hand and provide entertainment platforms to our consumers at the other,” Nokia India Director (Operator Channels) V Ramnath said.
Nokia’s Ovi Life Tools will be available to RCom users under subscription and pay-per-use models. While education and entertainment services will be offered at Rs 30 per month, agriculture service will be available at Rs 60 per month, Ramnath told reporters here.
The pay-per-use will be priced at Rs 3 on request.
The association with RCom is an important step towards creating a strong ecosystem to take these services to a larger consumer base, he added.
As part of this alliance, RCom is also offering Mobile Data bundle of 1.2 GB on Nokia GPRS-enabled handsets (other than the Nokia’s Ovi Music Unlimited (OMU) enabled phones).
In addition, RCom is offering up to 1800 free on-net minutes bundled with Nokia 1800. These free voice minutes and mobile data bundles has a validity of six months.
Virgin Mobile ties up with GetJar
Virgin Mobile India has announced its alliance with GetJar, a cross platform mobile applications store.
With this alliance Virgin Mobile customers will have access to a wide gamut of applications ranging from games, education, social networking, entertainment, finance, food, health, search, lifestyle and several other utility applications.
It will also allow users to access Facebook Mobile, Yahoo!, Nimbuzz, Opera Mini Browser and eBuddy GetJar currently offers more than 70,000 free mobile games and applications to its users.
MA Madhusudan, chief executive officer, Virgin Mobile India, said, “Mobile applications and games garner a significant share of time spent on the phone by the youth today. We are excited to announce our alliance with GetJar; the world’s largest cross platform application store. This will provide our users free, easy access to globally acclaimed applications, games and will further reiterate our commitment to offer the best value-for-money services to our valued customers.”
As per a company statement, with over 300 per cent growth every year, GetJar achieves an average of almost three million downloads per day globally and adds hundreds of new applications every week to its repository. GetJar supports all major platforms such as Android, Blackberry, Windows Mobile, Java and Symbian phones, among others and delivers applications for every kind of smart phone and feature phone across 200 countries.
This link to GetJar application store is currently available on Virgin Mobile India’s WAP portal (Vbytes) on GSM platform across 16 circles.
Virgin Mobile India users will be able to download all applications free of cost. Only the data browsing charges of one paisa per KB will be charged on access.
Freecharge.in to make prepaid mobile recharge virtually free in India
Freecharge is a newly launched e-commerce service that enables its users to recharge any prepaid mobile phone in India. Their offering is unique as the amount paid by the user for recharge is returned in form of shopping coupons of some of the retailers in India, thereby making the recharge virtually free.
If a user recharges his prepaid connection for Rs100 by paying for it online he will also receive discount coupons worth Rs 100 that he can avail at any of the listed retailers.
Currently the site offers coupons of McDonald and Barista only. But they expect to add more retailers to the list soon. The company plans to offer multiplex tickets, gaming zone coupons and apparel purchase coupons soon.
Accelyst solutions, the company behind Freecharge, is a strategic marketing company working with some of India’s top retailers. Freecharge is currently seed funded by Tandon Group, members of the Mumbai Angels. The team has acquired a ‘patent pending’ status for their business model.
Kunal Shah, managing director , Accelyst Solutions said , “The potential of ecommerce in India cannot be doubted, though the lack of successful e-commerce companies in India mostly owes to the fact that companies do not invest enough resources in gaining insight about consumer behaviour. At Freecharge we have taken this challenge head on and are constantly working towards improving user experience.”
The online prepaid recharge business currently contributes to less than one per cent of the total prepaid recharge but given the volumes of the Indian telecom industry even this amount runs in over hundreds of Crores.
The model seems to be loosely based on Tata Teleservices T24, which is a mobile service jointly offered by Future group and TTSL. The service aims to make mobile calling free by offering vouchers of Future groups retail arms.
Freecharge model makes it more attractive as they offer similar service for all the mobile customers. However given that oraginsed retail is a purely urban phenomenon, the application will broadly benefit mobile subscribers in bigger urban centres only.
“We started before T24 was launched, we planned to launch services in march, but tie-up with service providers took some time. More over T24 limits you to one service provider, one retailer, while we plan to offer multiple service provider and multiple retail channels” Naman Sarawagi Head Of Marketing, Accelyst Solutions said.
Taking about the future plans Naman said, ” We plan to offer DTH recharge going forward, one year down the line we also plan to go offline, with Kiosks at leading Malls and shopping complexes where coupons will be offered related to that particular mall and shopping complex”.
Facebook launches Places in USA, India waiting
Facebook has announced a location enabled service named Places with which users can share their current location on the site in real time.
In a blog post, Michael Sharon, product manager, Places, Facebook, said that the application also enables Facebook users to tag friends who are with them and locate other friends who are nearby.
The service is only available for iPhone users in the USA, to begin with. iPhone users will need to download an updated version of the Facebook iPhone application in order to access the new service. Facebook said it will look to offer the service in more countries and on more platforms soon.
If a user’s mobile Browser supports HTML 5 and geo location, the features can be accessed from touch.facebook.com.
A user is required to ‘check in’ to a particular place in order to share his location with his friends.
Checking In lists near by places and a user can choose a place that matches his/her location. If the place is not listed, the user can search for it or add it. The check in will create a story in the user’s friends’ news feeds and show up in the recent activity section on the page for that place.
Although the feature is not yet available in India, it might be a viable business opportunity for Facebook.
A similar location based service has been developed by Telenity for telecom operators Airtel and BSNL.
Yogesh Bijlani, country head and general manager, Asia Pacific, said, “Airtel’s Buddy Finder and BSNL’s Friend Finder have been quite successful so far in India.”
He added, “I do not have a specific number to share about how many people are using Buddy Finder but I can say Telco’s do not do above the line campaign for any product which has less than a million subscribers. So what I can say is we definitely have more than one million subscribers for Buddy Finder.”
He also said that this initiative by Facebook will be an instant hit in India as this social networking site has a mass appeal over here and it even works on low cost handsets and is operator independent.
Apart from that he said this application will also catalyse LBS market in India to launch something which is simple but has a mass appeal.
Jagish Mitra, chief executive officer, CanvasM, said, “It is seen that location based services limited to one operator is usually not successfully, whereas those which are operator independent are received well. The new Facebook application Places is expected to do well in India as it works across all operators.”
He added, “Although we are not doing anything specific for social networking, but we have a larger program on location aggregation, which works across operators. This has been launched globally and depending on the kind of response we get, the same will be launched in India.”
Recently even FICCI had organised a roundtable on LBS to discuss the opportunities and challenges in offering Location based services.
Rakesh Mahajan, VP Marketing Business Head, VAS and Incubation Mobile Services, had said to Telecom Yatra on the sidelines of FICCI round table on LBS that, “Airtel plans to take LBS to the next level by incorporating location awareness in all it’s VAS offerings.”
Spice, Qualcomm to launch Android handset today
Spice Mobility is going to announce the launch of its first Android handset in the country today, according to sources.
The smartphone will be based on Qualcomm’s MSM 7227 platform. It was launched as Mi300 in Malaysia last month.
The handset comes with a 3.2 inch HVGA display, a 5 MP camera, a 3.5 mm audio jack, GPS with Navigator, push email and WiFi.
Our sources also said that the smartphone will be priced at Rs 16000. However, as an introductory offer, it will be available at all Hotspot outlets at Rs 9990.
India has just 304 mn mobile subscribers
India is without doubt the fastest growing telecom market in the world, but it had only 304 million subscribers at the end of May this year, according to a report by a market research firm. TRAI, on the other hand, had reported 621.28 million mobile subscribers at the end of March this year.
A research report titled India Mobile 2010, by market research group Juxt said, “While Juxt survey measures and reports both the mobile users (subscribers) and mobile connections (subscriptions, ie who take new connections), TRAI data reports only the mobile connections, (which it mistakenly calls ‘subscribers’).”
The report further says that, “In Juxt data there is a direct linkage between ‘number of active subscribers’, ‘number of active subscriptions’ and ‘number of active SIMs per subscriber’. Unless the same linkages are available as clearly and as comprehensively in TRAI data, a direct comparison is neither advisable nor appropriate”.
Mrutyunjay Mishra, director, Juxt, said, “We have measured only those mobile connections (SIMs) which are actively in use at the time of the survey, not counting the passive SIMs that may still be lying with subscribers – un-surrendered, but not being used actively.”
Interestingly, TRAI does not distinguish between active and passive SIMs. It reports all un-surrendered mobile connections (SIMs) in circulation as reported by the mobile operators, which may be actively in use or lying passive (in use occasionally, rarely, or not in use at all).”
According to analysts, the tremendous growth that the country has registered over the past few years can be attributed to improvement in telecom infrastructure and lately, to the adoption of multiple connections per user.
But the catch is that if regulators introduce a new regulation limiting the number of SIM cards per user (thus strengthening the verification process), and asking all operators to remove inactive SIM cards from their subscriber base, to report active subscribers, such as has been done in Vietnam and Pakistan, we would see operators’ subscriber bases shrinking dramatically.
Apart from that, while TRAI data indicates a 75:25 split in urban and rural mobile connections, the split at both the subscriber level and the active connection level as found in the Juxt report is closer to 50:50. The report says that the mobile subscriber base in rural and urban India is 146 million and 158 million, respectively.
If we look at the Indian population split, which is 70 per cent rural and 30 per cent urban, the marketing of any product for the masses, such as the mobile phone (with the pivot of its usage centred among the middle and lower middle class), which currently is heavily loaded in favour of urban India, is bound to drift towards the hinterlands eventually.
Also, according to the Planning Commission, 27.5 per cent of the population was living below the poverty line in 2004–2005, which means that only around 70 per cent of the Indian population can be the target subscribers.
Mishra said, “In our findings, urban-rural split of subscribers and subscriptions is reported from a physical location of households at the town and village level, and the list of towns and villages are taken from census listing.”
He added, “There is little clarity on how the urban-rural split is recorded and reported by operators, and TRAI, and whether all SIMs in use in rural areas are recorded as rural, as many such connections may actually be getting bought in the urban areas.”
He further added that what is also important to understand about rural usage of mobile phones in India is that the majority of rural mobile users and connections originate in villages that have large populations (greater than 2,000), which also show a high propensity to have multiple SIMs.
Further adding, he said, three-fourths of all existing rural mobile subscribers stay within 10 km from the nearest town – indicating a fairly concentrated penetration of mobile users in rural areas.
Regarding mobile handsets, the report says that there are 355 million active mobile handsets in India, and that mobile handsets that are in the price range of Rs 1,500 to Rs 3,000 are the ones which have seen the maximum sales.
Also, urban users show an inclination for handsets that cost more than Rs 3,000, while the rural population prefers handsets costing below Rs 1,500.
The Juxt research is based on a land survey of about 2.6 lakh individuals spread across all the mainland states and union territories, covering all the 23 telecom circles of the country. The survey was conducted in April–May this year, among about 37,000 households in 100 cities, and close to 20,400 households in 1,040 villages.
Wynn Telecom to enable free SMS on its upcoming handsets
Wynncom has entered an exclusive agreement with a free SMS service application provider 160by2.com. The agreement will allow users to send free SMSs from their mobile phones through an embedded application.
Wynncom mobile phones will have a preinstalled application developed by 160by2.com, one of India’s largest free SMS service providers. This unique application enables mobile phone users to send free SMSs to any mobile in India and in the UAE, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Malaysia and the Philippines.
This application will use a GPRS connection to send the SMS, and the charge for data use will be miniscule.
Another feature provided by this application will enable the user to access the mobile phone book to send messages. Users can also save mobile phone contacts on 160by2.com, using it as a memory backup.
Speaking on the occasion, Vivek Sachdev, general manager, product division, Wynn Telecom, said, “Wynncom makes life simpler by cutting down the requirement to browse the internet from your phone by introducing this unique feature of having a direct access to 160by2.com in just one click. This application in Wynncom mobiles bridges distances and helps stay connected and affordable.”
160by2 intends to extend its services shortly to the rest of the Middle Eastern nations, including Bahrain, Yemen, Qatar and Oman. With a large number of Indians residing in these countries, 160by2.com will be a useful platform for them to stay connected to their people in India.
Commenting on the tie up with Wynncom Mobiles, Satyakalyan Yerramsetti, chief executive officer, 160by2.com, said, “We are extremely happy with our tie up with Wynncom mobiles and hope this partnership will take mobile Messaging to the next level. 160by2.com will upgrade this application from time to time in order to serve all Wynncom mobile users better.’’
Ranked among the top 100 most visited sites in India, and among the top 10 most visited WAP sites in the country, 160by2 also provides a bulk messaging platform, enabling business and promotional users to connect with their associates and target customers in a cost effective manner.
This agreement will enable 160by2 to improve its reach by being available on the mobile platform. So far, it has used the internet to provide services. Since mobiles reach farther than the internet does, the mobile platform will very likely help 160by2 to reach new customers.
It is expected that 160by2 will extend this application to other mobile handset players also, once the exclusive agreement expires after the agreed period of eight months.
Nokia, Airtel tie up to offer Ovi Life Tools
Nokia and Bharti Airtel have partnered to launch Ovi Life Tools service targeted at providing Airtel’s mobile customers with access to relevant content on agriculture, education and entertainment.
With this association, Airtel subscribers will be able to activate Ovi Life Tools across areas that have network availability. They can subscribe to the service starting at Rs 10.
The Nokia Life Tools service enables subscribers to use agriculture services which include personalised agriculture related information, weather updates, crop advisory and market prices of their produce; education services which include English learning, general knowledge and exam preparation modules covering state and central boards; and entertainment services such as wallpapers, ringtones, ring back tones, games, jokes, news etc.
This service is available on a range of Nokia handsets including the popular entry level devices, and is available in 11 Indian languages including Hindi, Gujarati, Tamil, Telugu, Bengali, Oriya, Assamese, Marathi, Malayalam, Kannada and Punjabi in addition to English.
Shireesh Joshi, chief marketing officer, mobile services, Bharti Airtel, said, “We hope that Ovi Life Tool becomes a key component of our emerging market portfolio, enabling easy access to information, enhancing productivity and improving the quality of life for our customers.”
V Ramnath, director, operator channel, Nokia India, added, “Our association with Bharti Airtel for Ovi Life Tools will provide us a strong distribution platform, enabling us to take the benefits of this transformational service to a much larger consumer base.”
Tata Indicom launches Call-n-Tweet
TTSL (Tata Teleservices) has announced the launch of a Call-n-Tweet service, which is provided by Kirusa, a value added services provider.
Call-n-Tweet will enable Tata Indicom users to post voice tweets (short audio snippets) to their accounts on social networking site Twitter. This can be done through mobiles without logging on to the internet.
Lloyd Mathias, chief marketing officer, TTSL, said, “At last count, Twitter was attracting 190 million visitors per month and generating 65 million tweets a day. The introduction of Call-n-Tweet service would give our subscribers a very convenient and personal way to tweet without logging on the internet.”
The service is compatible with all mobile handsets available. Subscribers need to dial a number and send a voice tweet to update their status. Users can speak in any language. A voice tweet surpasses the limitation of 140 characters.
The user is charged 0.80 paise for sending a voice tweet from his mobile.