Airtel subscribers in Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra and Punjab download maximum music, both regional and Hindi, on their mobile phones. Of that, ‘Jab Dekho Phone Kar Dete Ho’ and an April Fool joke are the most downloaded ahead of the ‘Jai Ho’ track of the Slumdog Millionaire movie. The finding is part of Bharti Airtel’s mobile phone usage survey, Airtel Mobitude 2009, based on preferences and choices of its 116 million users located across India.
The study is based on compilation of data that captures all SMSes and downloaded content by an Airtel Mobile user during 2009. It is an annual survey that is released by the telco at the end of year. As per the company statement, over 200 million music downloads were done by Airtel users in 2009.
The survey also reveals that users send maximum messages on New Year followed by Diwali, Dusshera and Friendship Day. It also shows that Katrina Kaif and Aamir Khan were the most downloaded celebrities on the mobile phone, and many users download Hollywood celebrities too. In sports, Indian cricket players – Sachin Tendulkar and MS Dhoni – still rule the charts, followed by tennis player Rafael Nadal in the men’s category, and Maria Sharapova and Sania Mirza in the women’s category.
Atul Bindal, president, mobile services, Bharti Airtel , said in the statement, ” A mobile phone is considered by many as an intrinsic part of their daily life, be it a user in a small village or in a large town. It fulfils a consumer’s social and entertainment needs, from communicating with others, to downloading music, images and games.”
Karnataka, Punjab subscribers lead on downloads
Micromax, MTV launch co-branded handsets
Micromax Informatics, a mobile handset manufacturer, and music channel MTV have entered into a licensing deal where Micromax will launch a range of MTV co-branded mobile handsets in the market.The first handset to enter the market is the Micromax MTV X360.
Speaking to Telecom Yatra, Sandeep Dahiya, vice president, consumer products and communications, Viacom18, said “The deal with Micromax is for one year and we will get all the royalty on the sales of the handset.” He further stated the first handset will cost Rs 4,999.
The co-branded mobile handset is a music-oriented handset. Dahiya said, “The handset will be available on GSM platform only and will have content from various MTV shows.” The content will be in the form of screensavers, wallpapers, ringtones and videos from shows such as MTV Bakra, One Tight Slap, Semi Girebal and Roadies.
The handset has an 8GB expandable memory, dual SIM, GPRS, multi format music support, universal headset jack and Bluetooth. Micromax MTV X360 will be promoted through a multimedia campaign comprising print, television, internet and on-ground activation. The handset maker has further stated in the release that along with MTV they have plans to promote Micromax MTV X360 in both conventional as well as unconventional media. However, a Micromax spokesperson was not available for comments.
Micromax has 23 domestic offices across the country and international offices in Hong Kong, USA and now in Dubai. The company is eying a turnover of Rs 1500 crore by the end of this fiscal year and Rs 3000 crore for the next year. Currently it is present in more than 40,000 stores across the country has plans have 70,000 operational stores in the coming year.
In a similar move, USA-based handset maker Motorola had co-branded its handsets with Italian sports car manufacturer Ferrari for the Indian market early this year.
Tata Tele registers 18% growth in subscribers: TRAI
According to figures released by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), Tata Teleservices has fetched the highest number of net additions during the month of November 2009, at 18.8 per cent growth. Tata Teleservices has three brands under its umbrella which includes Tata Indicom (the CDMA brand), Tata Docomo (the GSM brand) and Virgin Mobile (GSM, prepaid). The operator has added about 3.3 million subscribers in November over the previous month. It is followed by Bharti Airtel and Vodafone with 15.85 per cent (280,000 subscribers) and 15.74 per cent (278,000 subscribers) respectively.
Interestingly, Tata Teleservices has managed to lure the highest number of subscribers since the month of September 2009 when it recorded a 26 per cent rise in market share with 136 million subscribers. In October, it had 525 million customers or 23 per cent rise in market share. It is probable that launch of TTSL’s GSM arm Tata Docomo has propelled the operator’s growth.
The figures show that the telephone subscriber base in India reached 543 million in November, bringing the teledensity to 46.3 per hundred population. The wireless subscriber base stands at 506 million.
In a break-up of circle-wise growth in mobile subscriptions, the figures reveal that in absolute numbers, Circle B continues to add the highest number of additions at 7.9 million in November. This circle comprises Punjab, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chhatisgarh, Kerala, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh (East), Uttar Pradesh (West), West Bengal, Sikkim and Lakshwadeep.
While the absolute growth for Circle C is 68.8 per cent in November, which shows that it has highest number of net additions year on year again second time in a row. This circle comprises Bihar, Jharkhand, Orissa, Assam, North East, Jammu & Kashmir and Himachal Pradesh.
As for the other circles, mobile subscribers grew at 47.9 per cent per cent in Circle A (Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra and Goa) and 36.9 per cent in metros (Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai and Kolkata).
Meanwhile, wireline or fixed line telephony continues to register a negative growth in all circles on a yearly basis.
The Broadband subscriber base has seen a rise from 7.4 million in October to 7.57 million in November, a growth of 2.26 per cent.
Uninor launches in Orissa, expands reach to 8 circles
Uninor, the latest entrant in the GSM mobile service space, has launched its services in Orissa, taking its footprint to eight telecom circles in India. The company has recently launched its services in Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh (East), UP West and Bihar (including Jharkhand).
The company is currently offering two price plans in Orissa – a base plan called talklonger@29p and a subscription plan called callmore@29p. The former is meant for customers who make longer calls and offers local calls at 29 paise per minute and STD calls at 49 paise per minute. For this, there is a call set up fee of 39 paise, which is charged only once a call is activated. With the latter plan, customers can make local calls at 29 paise per minute and STD calls at 49 paise per minute, with a daily rental of Rs 2.
As per the company’s statement, Uninor’s service is now available across 225,000 points of sale nationwide with over 60 exclusive shops.
“With Orissa, we complete the Blue Arc, the Uninor footprint that now sweeps seamlessly through North, East and Southern India covering India’s largest states. This also marks the completion of the first phase of our launch activities,” says Stein-Erik Vellan, managing director, Unitech Wireless in the statement.
“While our launch project now shifts to the second phase, the main focus now is on gaining shares where we have launched. On that, we have already scored some significant gains,” he adds.
Uninor is the brand name of Unitech Wireless, the joint venture company of India-based real estate group Unitech Ltd and Norway-based mobile services provider Telenor Group. The company holds a pan-India license to offer services in each of India’s 22 circles with spectrum to roll out these services in 21 of the 22 circles.
Bollywood apps in the spotlight
Bollywood has always been popular with mobile users in India, particularly as ringtones and caller ring back tones. Wallpapers and song tracks are also downloaded regularly. Now, it seems to be the turn of Bollywood applications developed by entertainment companies that are being promoted.
Two major entertainment companies, Eros Entertainment and Hungama Digital Entertainment, have recently received funding from Nokia to develop their Bollywood applications and make them available through its App download website, Ovi Store. This is part of the $10 million (Rs 46 crore) Open Screen Project Fund (OSPF) with Adobe. The OSPF is a market development fund aimed at promoting the creation of applications, content and services that use the Adobe Flash Platform and run on mobiles and computers. The applications have been shortlisted in the first phase of selection from over 900 entries submitted from over 60 countries.
Eros Entertainment’s ‘Eros Bollywood’ application allows instant, on-demand access to exclusive videos from Eros International including trailers, behind the scenes footage, interviews with actors, and clips from movies. The content is being drawn from Eros’ catalogue of over 1,900 films. The app will be initially available on all Symbian version 60 operating system phones that are touch-based, including Nokia N97, and will be available for free download on Ovi Store.
Manu Kaushish, senior vice president, new media, Eros International, told Telecom Yatra in an email response, “We plan to monetise the application and video views with exclusive brand placements using video ads. The application will first be available through the Nokia Ovi store. And we are working on porting the application to other leading mobile phone OS (operating software) platforms.” Commenting on the Nokia funding Eros has received, Kaushish said, “The funding is being used to develop the application and to build and manage the infrastructure that is needed to support content on the application.”
Hungama Mobile, a division of Hungama Digital Entertainment Private Limited, is another company that received funding by Nokia for its Bollywood application.
Siddhartha Roy, chief operating officer, Hungama Digital Media, told Telecom Yatra, “We will use the funding to create engaging and state of the art mobile entertainment for Nokia consumers. We are also planning to create features exploring GPS (global positioning system) on Nokia N97 such as show times and DVD store locator.”
The company’s Bollywood Hungama app, available on Nokia Ovi Store for N97 handset users, is a free of charge application that showcases premium Bollywood content. Bollywood news, behind the scenes exclusives, movie reviews and mobile downloads such as wallpapers and ringtones are available through this application. Some of the content is available exclusively on Nokia N97, on which the app comes embedded.
Roy added, “We have the digital rights to 85 per cent of all Indian entertainment content in the country. Through our partnerships in Bollywood, we have access to a lot of exclusive content for the mobile platform. Hungama Mobile plans to make this content available to Nokia users via the Ovi store, our music store as well as by embedding content into mobile devices.”
Earlier in 2008, Eros Multimedia, another division of Eros International, had entered into a deal with Hungama Mobile for the development, distribution and marketing of Eros’s music content for download on mobile phones.
Clearly, Bollywood applications are gaining favour with handset manufacturers who are looking at tapping the consumer market for mobile content in India.
Energy-saving app gets 1 lakh downloads
Impetus mLabs, the mobile research and development vertical of US-based product R&D company Impetus, has announced that its Green Charging application has achieved more than 100,000 downloads.
Green Charging is an energy-saving utility application for mobile phones. It triggers sound and vibration when the battery of the mobile phone is fully charged. It also provides other information such as the battery status, stand by time and talk-time (in percentages). The application can be downloaded free of cost from Nokia Ovi store and other application websites, and is currently available for Symbian phones only. It was among the top five shortlisted entries for the GSMA’s (GSM Association) Mobile Innovation Award Grand Prix-APAC Tournament, and was also shortlisted for the AT&T Fast-Pitch Platinum Awards this year.
Nilesh Maheshwari, business head, mobile and wireless, Impetus mLabs, said in a company statement, “It is encouraging to see that so many mobile users are willing to make conscious efforts to save electricity and do their bit in curbing the global warming phenomenon. We are also working on more such green and environmentally-sensitive applications.”
Apart from Green Charging, mLabs has also developed applications such as Mandi Bhav, GeoScrapper, Learn n Fun ABC, iDrummer, Paint Studio and Crack It. The company is planning to develop more green applications in future.
Impetus is product engineering services provider and offers outsourced software development experience to its clients and stakeholders. It specializes in product research, design and development.
Google focuses on mobile search in India
Google India has recently announced its year end Google Zeitgeist for 2009 which reveals what its users in India have been searching through the year. The report also provides a perspective on what clicked with people and the way they consumed information on the internet – both from the computer and mobile.
The top ten mobile queries in 2009 in India, according to the survey were Orkut, Katrina Kaif, Aishwarya Rai, Namitha, Gmail, Priyanka Chopra, Asin, Angelina Jolie, Cricket and Salman Khan.
“Considering our mobile search traffic for 2009 has quadrupled as compared to the last two years put together, this year we have put additional focus on users who access internet through their mobile phones,” said Vinay Goel, head of products, Google India.
Google’s survey suggests that the traffic has increased due to affordable data access on the mobile provided by operators. There are two ways with which one can access internet on mobile – one is through the web Browser which is in-built in the phone and the second could be through applications.
Speaking to Telecom Yatra , Alok Goel, product manager, Google India said, “Currently it is browsers which are accessed more because it is also available on the low cost handsets. Applications may have problems sometimes with respect to downloads. So, browsers are preferred.”
Although, with the upcoming advent of 3G in India, access of mobile internet is touted to become faster than it is currently. Goel believes that today one out of every 10 Indians uses mobile internet.
Goel further states, “There are an estimated 25 million mobile internet users against 70 million users on the desktop.” He explains that usually mobile internet traffic is at its peak in the early morning, which is the time before one leaves for office. In this time, news and emails are the most browsed items. During lunch time short codes such as cricket and stock quotes are popular as it is information on the go. And finally after evening hours, entertainment is searched most, he adds.
Google India reveals that Gmail, Orkut and Maps are most sought after mobile applications currently. Interestingly, according to Goel, the mobile internet traffic of Aircel in particular has increased after mid-2009. The rise probably comes after the operator introduced Pocket Internet cards for its subscribers. Pocket Internet was introduced by Aircel in April 2008. It is a topup card available at Rs 98 wherein it has unlimited surfing, uploading and downloading on GPRS-enabled handsets and laptops or computers.
Goel added that the traffic on Aircel has gone up by 20 times after the launch, though he did not share the figures. An Aircel spokesperson was unavailable to comment despite repeated attempts.
Airtel, Vodafone lose subscribers in J&K; others gain: COAI
Two of India’s leading operators, Bharti Airtel and Vodafone, have lost a significant number of subscribers in Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) in the month of November. According to the recently released GSM cell subscriber figures for November by the Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI), Bharti Airtel has lost about 69,000 subscribers while Vodafone has lost 22,500 subscribers in November in J&K. The total number of J&K subscribers in November stand at 1.8 million and 170,000 for Airtel and Vodafone respectively.
However, the trend is different for other operators. Aircel has gained about 5,000 subscribers in the state while BSNL and Idea Cellular have added 28,800 and 2,600 subscribers respectively. The total number of GSM subscribers in J&K has fallen by 1.3 per cent to 4.1 million.
The fall in subscribers is probably a result of the ban imposed on prepaid connections in J&K last month by the Ministry of Home Affairs. The Ministry had announced a ban on the use of prepaid SIM cards in the state quoting security reasons. It had decided that no prepaid mobile connections should be issued and existing pre paid SIM cards should not be renewed starting November.
The COAI figures also throw light on the fact that Aircel has registered the maximum percentage growth in subscribers in the month of November. It has added 1.6 million subscribers nationwide, a rise of 5.79 per cent from 27 million in October. However, its market share has shown a marginal improvement only, from 7.8 per cent in October to 8 per cent in November.
Idea Cellular, following Aircel, has registered a subscriber growth of 4.78 per cent from its 53 million figure of the previous month. Other operators have not seen a significant percentage growth, with Bharti Airtel at 2.47 per cent, BSNL at 2.27 per cent and Vodafone at 3.24 per cent. The Reliance subscriber figures are not available in COAI data.
The total number of GSM subscribers in the country stands at 366 million, a rise of about 3.12 per cent from 355 million in the previous month.
S Tel launches in India with pay per second plan
S Tel Private Limited, a joint venture between Siva Group (formerly Sterling Infotech Group) and BMIC Limited, a subsidiary of Bahrain Telecommunications Company (Batelco), has launched its GSM mobile services in India. The telecom operator has started operations from Himachal Pradesh where services are expected to be launched this week. It will later launch its services in Orissa, Bihar and Jharkhand, Jammu & Kashmir, Assam and North East circles. The company has currently acquired Unified Access Services Licenses and spectrum in six C circle towns.
S Tel has launched tariff plans at one paisa per second and 50 paisa per minute for STD and local outgoing calls respectively.
The operator has tied up with Indiatimes.com to offer value added services with localised content including astrology, Bollywood, sports, career and education. It will use non-traditional channels such as insurance agencies, cable operators, courier services and Panchayats to distribute its products.
Siva Group is a $3 billion group (about Rs 14,000 crore), working in verticals such as wind energy, shipping and logistics, hospitality and realty, media, education and agro business. Bahrain-headquartered Batelco is a telecommunications operator with mobile, fixed and wireless broadband, Datacom and fixed line services. It has operations in 7 markets across the Middle East, North Africa and Asia.
Loop Mobile announces 10p per minute plan in Mumbai
It seems operators are intensifying the tariff war to lure more subscribers. Mumbai-based Loop Mobile (formerly BPL Mobile) has introduced a new plan for its subscribers. The service provider has launched a new Mumbai ka Gang plan. This plan allows its prepaid subscribers to call all Loop Mobile numbers at 10 paise per minute.
Alternatively, there is a plan for per second calling, which allows subscribers to make calls at ‘1 paisa per 6 seconds’.
Loop Mobile’s subsidiary Loop Telecom has received license to start GSM operations in 21 telecom circles in the country and has received spectrum for 20 circles. It has begun operations in Tamil Nadu, Orissa, Karnataka and Kerala under the brand name Loop Mobile.