Mobile is 20 years old. What lies ahead ?

Mobile technology recently celebrated its 20th birthday. It was on September 7, 1987 that 15 telco firms signed an agreement to build mobile networks based on GSM. And voila - the mobile was born.

Fast forward 20 years and India is now the hottest and fastest growing mobile market in the world. With a subscriber base of 165.1 million and 15.5 million subscribers added in the first quarter this year, Gartner estimates that revenue from mobile services will increase by more than 18% each year for the next five years.

However, point to note is that this revenue growth is going to come from an expanded subscriber base. Average Revenue per User (ARPU) in the Indian mobile market is amongst the lowest in the world. With the ARPUs projected to dip even further, this revenue growth is projected from targeting the rural areas, where the mobile penetration is still about 2%.

While increasing the subscriber base will definitely be the higher priority, I feel that there needs to be some serious innovation in the mobile market.  SMS, ringtones and wallpapers are now old school. Even callback ring tones are now passe. There is need to come up with the next killer app for the mobile industry. Data is touted as the bigger revenue generator - but where are the breakthrough apps to go with it ?  What about GPRS statistics ? I’m yet to see any official reports / figures related to the number of GPRS users in India. A lot is expected to happen when 3G goes live. What about the innovation till 3G goes mainstream ?

Your thoughts ?

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