Vodafone has launched a mobile comic service by the name of Chhota Comics.
Through this service, Vodafone customers will have access to comic strips as well as full length comics of popular Indian and international titles which include Suppandi, Chacha Chaudhary, Mickey & Donald, Akbar Birbal, Winnie the Pooh, Hanuman etc.
The comics are priced at Rs 2 for a strip and Rs 15 for a full comic. The service will support features like pan, zoom and vibrate to enhance the user experience.
Kumar Ramanathan, chief marketing officer, Vodafone Essar, said in a statement, “Last year we launched Amar Chitra Katha on Vodafone, which became very popular with our customers. With the launch of Chhota Comics service, we aim to further enhance our customers’ experience by providing them with advanced features and more comic categories.”
A few months ago, Rediff.com India has announced the availability of Diamond comics on mobile phones. Disney also has tie ups with operators such as Airtel and Reliance for providing comic strips to mobile users. Like Vodafone, Airtel too provides Amar Chitra Katha in the form of mobile comics.
The trend of m-comics has also caught up with the new network service providers such as Tata Docomo. The GSM brand of Tata Teleservices had launched its own mobile comics service by the name ‘comix on the go’. Another similar service offered by the operator is ‘Docomics’ where subscribers can read full comics from the popular Marvel comic titles.

Dow Jones, in association with Bharti Airtel, introduced The Wall Street Journal India Mobile application in India for the first time. This application will enable the users to access the latest international and Indian financial and business news from The Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones Newswires. The Airtel mobile customers can use the application free of charge by downloading it.
Customers will pay a monthly subscription fee of Rs 99 for premium financial market news and data, the personalization functionality and the portfolio tracker, which helps monitor stock portfolios as well as mutual funds and commodities investments, which will be accessed exclusively.
Discussing the partnership, Mitya New, managing director, Dow Jones India says in an official communiqué, “The application will provide leading EDGE functionality and content targeted at consumers in the Indian market. Our partnership with Bharti Airtel will take us to every nook and corner of the country.”
The Wall Street Journal India Mobile application is simpatico with most of the Blackberry and Nokia Smartphones; the same will be extended to other handsets as well.
“Airtel has always LED the pack in providing innovative mobile content to the customers asserting the international standards. Our latest offering will let the customers access financial news and information on their handsets,” added Raghunath Mandava, chief marketing officer, mobile services, Bharti Airtel.
The application will allow the customers to get real time updates with the latest headlines, market commentary and analysis, data on equity, mutual fund, IPO and commodity markets and a portfolio tracker, allowing users to monitor their personal investments.
In addition, it will also give access to international news, technology trends, lifestyle features, blogs and multimedia content from The Wall Street Journal, including an exclusive tie up with Naukri.com for premium job seekers and hotel deals from Yatra.com.

Mobile phones can play a significant role in imparting education in India. The importance of this medium is slowly but steadily being realised by players in the telecom industry, who are now developing the necessary applications to work towards mobile education (m-education or m-learning).
Since the mobile learning space is still evolving, there is no industry estimate on the size of the market, as it is too small. A report on mobile VAS in India by IAMAI and IMRB says that the value added services industry stood at Rs 5,780 crore annually in June 2008. Out of this, P2P (peer to peer) SMS contributes Rs 2,140 crore and this goes only to the operators (the balance Rs 3,640 crore is divided among the different stakeholders including the operators). The report estimates the VAS industry to reach Rs 16,520 crore by June.
Several telcos have started offering m-education services such as English lessons, dial-in tutorials, school syllabi, question sets, vocabulary general knowledge tutorials, exam tips, exam result alerts and education for the physically challenged. These operators usually partner with VAS companies to develop the applications.
At present, many leading operators are providing m-education services and applications to their subscribers. Aircel, the fifth largest GSM player in the country by subscribers, offers education related services through its mGurujee application. The App allows users access to content in areas of engineering, management, civil services and medicine; school syllabi of CBSE and ICSE boards as well as skill development, vocabulary and general knowledge tutorials. A user can subscribe to mGurujee and get access to learning content in practice, quiz, timed or tutorial mode. When the user completes a question set or the time is over, the results are displayed instantly. The operator charges Rs 5 per question set and Rs 30 per month for subscription to a question set.
Another GSM operator, Tata Docomo, provides an English Seekho service through its mobile portal, Tata Zone. It allows users to take conversational English language lessons on their mobiles through an interactive voice response (IVR) application that guides the user through audio clips. It offers short lessons followed by interactive lessons which enable users to practice what they have learnt through the mobile’s keys or through speech recognition. The subscription fee for this service is Rs 20 per month and call charges are 60 paise per minute. It is available in 24 cities.

Commenting on the potential of m-learning services, Lloyd Mathias, chief marketing officer, Tata Teleservices, says, “There is a definite appeal in game-based learning using mobile phones, though this has not been explored in India so far. Currently, we are experimenting with game-based learning technology on mobile phones. However, the feasibility of such an approach depends on the cost of development and deployment of such applications, which are quite high at this time. With increasingly-capable hardware and connectivity available and dropping costs, it’s only a matter of time before learning games on mobile become commonplace.”

Reliance Communications too has been doing some work on this front through its mobile portal, RWorld. The company first launched an m-education service in 2003 called m-school, where teachers and parents could access data bases of schools and register queries and complaints. RCom provides exam results, career counseling, etiquette and grooming sessions. It also provides English learning based on translations in rural areas through its Grameen VAS initiative. Krishna Durbha, head of value added services, Mobile Data and content at Reliance Communications, says, “Mobile is a viable medium for basic education. The mobile learning space is completely new and is waiting to grow. There is a lot of opportunity but there is a need to find the right content. Touch screen and large screen formats will do wonders and they need to be available at cheaper rates. With good network and connectivity we can do lots. We are promoting mobile learning with some large foreign organisations in social sector with roots in India.”
State-owned telco BSNL has also started offering an English learning service for its subscribers. It has launched a spoken English program, Learn English, which has been designed by Mumbai-based mobile content provider EnableM Technologies in association with Bangalore-based OnMobile Global. The program teaches spoken English through simple stories and everyday situations that a common man can relate to. Subscribers have the option of selecting their level of learning, based on their proficiency in the language. Daily SMS and practice tests are a part of the package, which is available in nine Indian languages. It also allows subscribers to receive a new word daily through SMS. The subscription cost for this is Rs 20 per month and call browsing charges are 30 paise per minute.

EnableM Technologies currently provides multiple m-learning solutions to five operators, including BSNL. Amit Zaveri, chief operating officer, EnableM, says, “We manage the entire learning portfolio for Nokia and also power some of the content. We are also planning to go to Bangladesh. We see a lot of opportunity in the emerging markets as there is low Bandwidth and dissemination of content is not standardised. We have already seen a lot of traction. We have a two-pronged strategy – we work with telcos and Nokia, as well as with closed user groups such as corporates, publishers and government.”
Apart from telcos, institutions such as the Indira Gandhi National Open University ( IGNOU) have initiated basic mobile services for students spread across the country. IGNOU is using an SMS model for exam alerts, which is available in five regional sectors in India and has a network of 30,000 to 50,000 students.
At present, most companies offering m-learning directly or indirectly consider the industry to be very small but see a lot of opportunity in this space with newer applications coming in.

Speaking about how mobile learning can evolve further, Sangeet Chowfla, executive vice-president, Comviva, says, “The learning experience on mobile phones can change dramatically if interactivity comes in. With a higher bandwidth, m-learning has the opportunity to get much more interactive. Use of video clips to explain a procedure such as how to change a car tyre, training of employees and vocational stuff will be a big opportunity area. Companies will make use of mobiles for employee training. Enterprise learning is a huge opportunity.” Gurgaon-based Comviva is a provider of integrated VAS solutions for telecom operators worldwide.

Opera Software today launched the latest beta version of its popular mobile web browser, Opera Mini 5, for the Android mobile operating system (OS).
The Google Android mobile OS was first launched in October 2008 with the HTC Dream handset. India got Android in July 2009 with the launch of HTC Magic. The Android OS has become widely popular especially owing to the fact that it is an open source platform which means that the program’s code is freely available and any developer can create applications to run on it, without having to take permission or licenses.
Research company Gartner predicts that Android sales will surge to 14 per cent of the global smart phone market in 2012, ahead of the iPhone, Windows Mobile and BlackBerry smart phones.
In an email response to Telecom Yatra, an Opera Software spokesperson said “Opera Mini Browser is in its fifth generation now. With Opera Mini 5 Beta version we want to give Android users the ‘one web’ experience on their mobiles too. Users can have the same browsing experience on their mobile, desktops or any other device.” The Opera Mini 5 Beta has speed dials, bookmarks, tabs and Password manager.
Opera believes that mobile Internet has tremendous scope in India. The spokesperson added, “India’s PC penetration remains lower than the global average, as a result of this people turn towards their handsets to get online. (With) the launch of affordable handsets such as Micromax, Spice Mobile and Lemon Mobile, there is bound to be an exponential growth in mobile internet as well.
In India, Opera Software has developed close partnerships with operators such as Tata Teleservices. Tata delivers Opera Mini on approximately 30 handset models, allowing users to download it as a service.”

Apalya Technologies, a Hyderabad-based mobile video service provider, has announced its partnership with Global Cricket Ventures (GCV) for streaming match coverage live to the mobile, for which Apalya will have exclusive rights. The deal has been signed for the next three years, which include the approaching Indian Premiere League 2010.
The partnership will enable cricket fans all over the world to catch IPL action real time, while on the move. Vamshi Reddy, co founder and chief executive officer, Apalya told Telecom Yatra, “We already have arrangements in place with almost all mobile operators and for laptop users live video streaming can be accessed through Tata Photon Mobile Data cards. The service would work on any GPRS enabled handset with support for video streaming.”
The charges for this service, informed Reddy, vary from operator to operator. For example Airtel will charge Rs 40 per week for the service while Idea, MTNL and BSNL will charge Rs 150 for the entire season.
Apalya Technologies will earn revenue in two ways: It will share revenue with the operator and also generate revenue by selling advertising.