India Mobile

19
Oct 09

The Crapstore

Although I’ve been tempted to own an iPhone since the day it launched, I’d held off doing so because AT&T is the sole carrier in the US and frankly – AT&T simply sucks. However, I finally caved in and got myself one a couple of weeks ago.

First and foremost – there’s no denying that the iPhone is an amazing device and singlehandedly can be attributed for jumpstarting the entire mobile platform market. From touch screen to the accelerometer to the appstore, it has pioneered an entire market in no time. Apple has gotten such a big headstart in terms of the application ecosystem that other players are going to have a tough time catching up. But while Apple continues to flaunt the 85000 + apps in its appstore in its TV ads, I’d say the number of meaningful apps in the appstore is much less than half that number.

When you leave out the gazillion fart apps, the lighter apps, the flashlight apps and the bikini babes apps, there are just very few worthwhile apps that warrant enough justification to be installed let alone used regularly.

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India Mobile — 16 comments

24
Sep 09

How many mobile platforms can we take ?

The iPhone without an ounce of doubt jumpstarted the smartphone category. So much so that smartphones are one of the fastest growing category of phones in the US market.

Earlier, mobile app development was restrained by closed platforms and proprietary OS’es.  Now, however, it looks like the increasing number of mobile platforms might lead to a new, different problem. Increased fragmentation and confusion about which platforms to support. You already have Symbian, RIM, Windows Mobile, Android, iPhone, WebOS (Palm), Mameo.

Now, it seems that Intel is planning to launch their own mobile platform. And LiMo seems to be picking up steam as well.

iPhone and RIM and Android dont seem to be going anywhere anytime soon. Symbian is already seeing declining market share and it seems that even Nokia is looking to defect to Mameo – although currently, Symbian totally dominates markets like India and Africa.

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India Mobile — 3 comments

14
Aug 09

Call for killer Indian mobile startups

Under The Radar, a premier showcase conference, is seeking applications from mobile startups to present at their upcoming conference on November 19th in California.

As part of their effort to seek out innovative companies outside of silicon valley, they’ve solicited StartupDunia to reach out to Indian mobile startups.

So if you are an Indian mobile startup, here’s your chance at some excellent exposure — drop me an email at contact[AT]startupdunia.com with details about your startup, founders etc. – I will compile a list of the most promising ones and pass them along.

Some of the categories they’re looking for:

Business Apps | LBS | Games/Entertainment | Infrastructure | Content | Sync | Micro-payments/virual currency | Data Storage | Green tech | Developer tools/Opensouce frameworks



Events / India Mobile — 6 comments

15
Jun 09

Airtel to sell unlocked iPhones

Apple has authorized Airtel to sell unlocked iPhones to customers, enabling an user on any operator to get and use the iPhone.  No word on whether Vodafone, the other iPhone provider in India, has been granted similar privileges or not (seems not).

Its not clear yet, on how much Airtel will charge extra for the unlocked iPhone (‘locked’ iPhone costs Rs 36,000 for the 16 GB version). Unlocked iPhones are already available at various retailers, if you know where to go. Additionally, the iPhone 3GS will be available in India on August 9th.

Is Apple making this move to get more iPhone customers in India ? From the very start, iPhone has not performed well in the Indian market — is Apple hoping to change that with the unlocking strategy ?

via BS



India Mobile — 5 comments

27
May 09

Navteq shortlists Asia Pacific semifinalists for the LBS challenge

Navteq has shortlisted the semifinalists from the Asia Pacific region for their global location based services (LBS) Challenge.  Among other candidates, some of the apps shortlisted from India include:

  • ‘Bargain Seeker’ from 3 Door Trading – allows businesses and individuals to offer discounted products to consumers
  • ‘Services Seeker’ from 3 Door Trading – allows consumers to connect with service providers based on their location
  • ‘Shout Out!’ from MakeMyTrip – helps travelers to connect and share info with other travelers
  • ‘Redgift’ from ValueFirst connect – locates nearby volunteer blood donors for emergency situations
  • ‘Hotel Companion’ from Yatra Online – enables travelers to locate and learn about POI near them

The finals for the LBS challenge are scheduled on June 19th in Singapore.



India Mobile — No comments

20
May 09

Microsoft’s My Phone goes into public beta

Microsoft’s ‘My Phone‘ service, that enables users to automatically backup contacts, photos, calendar, text messages and other data from their phone to a web based service, has launched into an open beta.  With automatic syncing and easy restore abilities, Microsoft believes that this will be a valuable resource to folks who lose their mobile. They have also expanded the language support and now, the service is available in 25 Windows Mobile languages.

The service is available only on Windows Mobile 6.0 / 6.1 Os’es.



India Mobile — No comments

27
Apr 09

Minus6 provides targeted SMS advertising to brands

minus6-logoMinus6 is a privately held company out of Baroda, that provides targeted SMS advertising to brands. Brands can filter and target their SMS campaign by the subscribers age, location and income levels. They claim to honor the National Do not Call registry and can send personalized messages to each subscriber.

This is quite different from the permission based SMS marketing companies like mGinger, where subscribers get paid to receive SMS advertisements.

Check out a couple of sample campaigns for restaurants below – Great incentives for the subscriber, targeted advertising for the brand.

minus6-campaign



India Mobile — 24 comments

22
Apr 09

SMaSh takes SMS texting to a whole new level

smash-logoWhile going through my unread feeds in Google Reader yesterday, I was pretty intrigued by a VentureBeat story on a US startup called SMaShcode.

What is SMaShcode ?

Briefly put, SMaShcode makes SMS texting transactional.

A simple glance of the above line probably might not do justice to how amazing and impactful this might be. But once you understand what it really means, it might sink in as to how successful this could become. SMS texting, in its current form, is not transactional. In other words, there’s no means to store / access sessions or cookies. Consequently, you cant successfully submit a form or carry out an ecommerce transaction or have personalization features based simply on SMS. Current forms of SMS are able to handle only a one time interaction between the service and the user. For example, voting via SMS or getting score updates or stock alerts via SMS. But SMS cant handle for instance a scenario, where you not only provide stock alerts to the user via SMS but also allow the user to change his portfolio in the same transaction. In other words, SMaSh enables stateful session handling between the app and the user.

smash_platform_sm

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India Mobile — 3 comments

13
Apr 09

UTV Media launches mobile music video channel in India

UTV New Media, the digital arm of UTV, has launched India’s first exclusive music video channel on mobile TV. Called UTV@play, users will be able to access music videos from a varied catalog, which includes not only Bollywood but international music as well. The service is available for Idea, Vodafone, BSNL and MTML subscribers.

  • IDEA – SMS “IDEATV to 55456” or WAP download (IDEA portal)
  • BSNL – SMS “MYTV to 55447”
  • MTNL (Delhi) – SMS “SUB to 53388”
  • Vodafone – SMS “VODAFONETV to 111” WAP download (Vodafone Live)

The cost of the service is Rs 10/day or Rs 30/month. Of the entire mobile user base, the current estimated size of mobile TV users in India is about 1 lakh users.

Mobile TV usage will most certainly increase once 3G becomes more prevalent.

via release



India Mobile — 10 comments

16
Feb 09

After Bharti Airtel, Vodafone blocks SMS from MyToday

In November last year, Bharti Airtel had blocked access to NetCore’s SMS service MyToday. The reason cited was that it violates the National Do Not Call (NDNC) regulations set by TRAI.

The issue was resolved and the service was restored. However, now, Vodafone seems to have blocked access to MyToday’s SMS alerts for the same reasons.

Here’s Rajesh Jain’s post from November when the Airtel incident happened and here’s info about the latest.

What I’m wondering is — it might have been a little easier (my assumption) for Rajesh to probably resolve the issue, considering the fact that he’s an accomplished entrepreneur, well known speaker and probably has a great network of contacts.

What would have happend if a first-time-not-so-famous entrepreneur would have run into similar issues ? How easy / difficult would have it been for them to amicably resolve the misunderstanding ?

I’ll probably seek out Rajesh’s answer to how easy – difficult it was for him to get the Airtel issue sorted out. Based on constraints, I’m not sure what he could and couldnt reveal.



India Mobile — 1 comment

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