AdMob, a USA-based mobile advertising platform, said that mobile web traffic (measured in terms of requests sent by the search engine for ads that are relevant to the terms being searched) to the AdMob network crossed the one billion mark last month. Speaking to Telecom Yatra, Mahesh Narayanan, country manager, AdMob, said, “We have seen explosive mobile web traffic growth in India with a 100 per cent increase since the last 12 months. The mobile web traffic from India on AdMob’s platform stood at 1.2 billion in March.” India generates the second highest mobile Web traffic globally on the AdMob platform following the USA, claims the company.
Narayanan said that the surge in mobile web traffic has come from both metros and non metros across the country with Aircel subscribers contributing the most, mainly owing to the launch of unlimited data plans by the pan-India operator. He added that in the near future, tier-II cities will be the biggest contributors to mobile web traffic in India as mobile web will be the major point of internet access for subscribers in those cities.
As per the AdMob Mobile Metrics Report for February, maximum web traffic in India came from Nokia 5130 and Nokia 3110c and of the smart phones, Nokia N70 and N80 saw the highest number of mobile web users. Narayanan said, “About 64 per cent of traffic on AdMob comes from smart phones, with Nokia, Apple iPhone and iPod Touch being the top devices.” He is of the view that the number of iPhone users is low in India but that the traffic is high from the existing devices.
Commenting on future trends in mobile advertising, Narayanan said, “We see the younger demographic, mainly in the 15 to 30 age bracket, taking to mobile web. It will become an essential part of their lives and most marketers should start observing this trend.”
In November 2009, Google had expressed its plans to acquire AdMob for $750 million (close to Rs 3,330 crore) and the deal is currently awaiting approval from the Federal Trade Commission of the United States. Founded in 2006, the company has a strong presence in the mobile advertising space and offers display ads on the mobile internet as well as within mobile applications. It also offers analytics and research tools.
Mobile web traffic from India on AdMob crosses 1 billion
Vodafone launches MP3 music store
Vodafone Essar has announced a music download service for its customers in Mumbai which will enable them to download full length MP3 songs charged at rupee one per song.
The service requires the customer to have a GPRS enabled handset. The music download service is available on Vodafone Live and is accessible by both postpaid and prepaid customers. Subscribers can also SMS the name of a song to a toll free number to access the service.
Customers can subscribe to this service on a daily basis for Rs 5 which entitles them to download 5 songs in a day. Selected songs are automatically saved to a personal playlist titled My Songs on the Vodafone Live portal. The selected songs can be downloaded again at no additional charge.
The song gallery includes genres like bollywood, bhajans, international hits, ghazals etc. Subscribers can search the database using the search option.
Rural teledensity reached 23 per cent in Jan
The country’s rural teledensity, including both wireless connections and fixed lines, was touching 23 per cent as on January 31, as per the Department of Telecommunications.
The government body also said that the total number of telephone subscribers in rural areas stood at 182.9 million (over 18 crore) at the end of January and that there were more than 460,000 rural BSNL Broadband connections at the end of February.
Among other target achievements in rural areas, DoT pointed out that by January, over 5.5 lakh villages (more than 95 per cent) had been covered by public telephones. Also, almost 80,000 gram panchayats had been covered with BSNL broadband by February.
New handsets garnered over 12 per cent of Indian market in 2009: IDC
The number of new handset vendors in the Indian market grew to 28 in 2009 says a report published by market intelligence firm IDC. Together these handset manufacturers garnered close to 18 per cent of total sales for the first time during the October-December quarter. Overall, for the year 2009, new vendors registered a combined market share of over 12 per cent of total mobile handset sales in India.
The report also states that India’s mobile handset market remained flat for the past year, registering sales of 101.54 million (over 10 crore) units. Sales in 2009 have been mainly affected by lower sales in the first half of the year, from January to June 2009. However, in the fourth quarter of the same year, a 2.3 per cent year on year growth was registered for sales, at 28.36 million (close to 3 crore) units.
The top three mobile phone vendors by the end of the fourth quarter last year, according to IDC, were Nokia with the largest share of over 54 per cent in terms of units sold, Samsung with close to 10 per cent and LG with a little over 6 of the market.
Set up in 1987, IDC (India), a subsidiary of CyberMedia, is a source for market intelligence and consulting in the fields of IT, telecommunications and consumer technology. With its head office at Gurgaon, the company has branch offices in Bangalore, Chennai, and Mumbai.
LinkedIn launches mobile app for BlackBerry
LinkedIn, the professional networking site, has launched its mobile application for BlackBerry smart phones globally, adding to its existing mobile offerings for iPhone and Palm Pre.
The application can be accessed at www.linkedin.com/blackberry and on BlackBerry App World, and has integration with the BlackBerry, which allows professionals to use LinkedIn within their existing email, calendar and contacts apps.
Hari V Krishnan, country manager, LinkedIn India, told Telecom Yatra, “We had achieved 3.4 million registered LinkedIn users in India till November 2009 and last week we announced that we have crossed 5 million. We want to make LinkedIn a core part of a person’s day to day professional life and the mobile strategy is extremely important for us. We have built this application keeping in mind the BlackBerry platform and we have integrated LinkedIn in BlackBerry itself. We have also integrated LinkedIn to Microsoft Outlook and IBM Lotus Notes.”
The LinkedIn app is free and available for download on theBlackBerry Tour, Curve and Bold models. It is available globally in English, Spanish, French, German, Japanese, and Chinese languages.
Commenting on launching the app on other platforms, Krishnan said, “We are definitely going to partner with other platforms and this is not the end. There are two things to it – firstly, we need to keep in mind the platforms of choice for professionals because our focus is on professionals and secondly, we want to partner with handset manufacturers for building the app for their platforms and not just a generic WAP (mobile internet) site as we believe that, in future, mobile will be all about integration of apps.”
The LinkedIn web site was launched in 2003 and claims to have more than 60 million members representing 200 countries and executives from every Fortune 500 company. The company’s corporate headquarters are in California, USA.
Idea Cellular introduces PreTones
Idea Cellular has announced the launch of a value added service named PreTones. The service lets Idea Cellular subscribers in Andhra Pradesh listen to content of their choice every time they make a voice call. The content portfolio that Idea offers includes live cricket, jokes, breaking news, astrology forecast, movie reviews and Bollywood gossip. The caller can listen to this content before the call is connected.
The service is not offered by any other Indian network service provider. It can be accessed at a daily charge of one rupee and is currently available to prepaid subscribers. However, an Idea spokesperson confirmed that the service will soon be launched for Idea postpaid subscribers in Andhra Pradesh.
Customers who subscribe to the service can register their preferences on the interactive voice response (IVR) system and can resume listening to the content by dialing a number after the call is over. Normal call rates apply for the outgoing call.
Indian wireless subscriber base touching 563.7 million
As per figures released by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), the wireless subscriber base has increased from about 545 million in January to 563.73 million in February, with a monthly growth rate of over 3 per cent. Hence, the total wireless additions in the month of February stand at 18.76 million new subscribers which is a drop from the 19.9 million new additions in the wireless segment in the month of January. The mobile teledensity stands at almost 48 per hundred as of February.
While Circle A saw 5.6 million additional wireless subscribers, Circle B added a little over 8 million, Circle C added 3.2 million and the metros saw 1.7 million subscriber additions.
The report by TRAI also states that the wireline subscriber base remained almost constant during the period with overall wireline teledensity at 3.14 per cent.
As per the figures, Vodafone Essar acquired about 16 of every hundred new subscribers to any service, followed by Bharti Airtel which has a little over 15 per cent share of the new market. Tata Teleservices has about 15 of every hundred new subscribers.
The total number of telephone subscribers (wireless plus wireline) in India increased to over 600 million at the end of February from about 582 million in January, thereby registering a growth rate of 3.2 per cent. With this, the overall teledensity in India reaches 51 per cent.
Tata Indicom launches prepaid services on BlackBerry
Tata Teleservices has launched prepaid services for Tata Indicom BlackBerry users. Subscribers can avail either weekly or monthly plans according to their requirement for email, instant messaging, social networking and internet browsing. The plans BlackBerry Messaging Bundle and BlackBerry Internet Bundle are available in monthly packages of Rs 299 and Rs 900, and weekly packages of Rs 85 and Rs 250 respectively.
Sunil Batra, president, operations, Tata Teleservices, said in an official statement, “Offering weekly services stems from our insight that prepaid segment is highly cost conscious and offering them weekly plans will liberate them from monthly commitments. Also, we do realise that customers’ service preferences change often and offering weekly plans that suit their pocket and offer flexibility to change service options and keep up with latest social trends is sure to be well received.”
According to the statement, BlackBerry Messaging Bundle gives customers unlimited access to email and instant messaging. It allows them to access the web and as many as ten POP3 email accounts. Both these plans are applicable to all BlackBerry smart phones from Tata Indicom.
Motorola rolls out its first Android phone in India
Motorola India launched its first Android phone in the country. Powered by Android 2.1, Milestone enables usage of multiple applications at a time as well as a hi-resolution pinch and zoom display. Priced at Rs 32,990, the handset comes with a five megapixel camera and an 8 GB memory card.
A suite of Google mobile applications including Google Search, Google Maps, Gmail and YouTube are integrated into the device. Users also have access to thousands of apps and widgets from Google’s Android store Android Market, as well as unified Google, Microsoft Office and Facebook contacts.
Faisal Siddiqui, country head, mobile devices, Motorola India, said in a statement, “Milestone is targeted at the well informed, socially connected individual. As an Android 2.1 device, Milestone does what other smart phones don’t. It was designed to enhance consumer experiences with its full screen web browsing experience, ability to juggle between multiple apps and suite of Google applications.”
Milestone comes preloaded with voice based street level navigable maps of 401 cities in India. The navigation service works independent of mobile network and can be used without inserting the SIM card as the maps are loaded on the handset.
Android is a software platform designed to deliver a customisable user experience on mobile devices. Other than the web browsing capability, it enables interactive web services such as email, social networking, mobile games and video sharing.
The Google Android mobile operating system (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.
Currently, HTC, Samsung, Sony Ericsson and now Motorola sell Android based phones in India.
BSNL offers free WiMax trial to customers
As per a new offer by BSNL, its subscribers can now experience WiMax services free of cost. BSNL will offer free trial of its WiMax service to customers till April 15. Customers will not be charged monthly rental or rent for the Modem for 30 days from the day of activation. They will also be able to download 400 MB of data free of cost.
However, subscribers will be required to deposit Rs 2,000 as security which will be refunded in case they are not interested in availing the services anymore.
WiMax is a limited area wireless internet connectivity service which allows high speed internet access. It is similar to WiFi, but the radius of the WiMax service is larger. Currently, BSNL offers internet at speeds ranging from 512 Kbps to 2 Mbps.
The state owned telco had launched the country’s first mobile WiMax service in Kerala earlier this month.