[MoMoBangalore] Views on future of mobile internet in India

[B.G. Mahesh]

vishwas mudagal wrote:
> Hey all,
> We have been hearing that mobile internet is the next big thing. And 
> now that India has hit the 38 million mark of net-enabled mobiles, 
> this no longer looks like a prediction. We are witnessing a shift in 
> the primary medium of internet access from PCs to mobiles. I had 
> written a small post 
> (http://revolutionnnn.blogspot.com/2007/10/net-enabled-mobiles-on-fast-track-in.html) to 
> start a brainstorming session (in our group) to analyze what will be 
> the next steps in creating a mobile revolution.
>  
> I was wondering what you guys think about it? may be this discussion 
> has happened many times ( i have recently joined MoMo) What will be 
> the mobile applications? What will be the business models? Would be 
> great to know your expert views!
>  
> Cheers!
> Vishwas 

This topic is of interest to me as we publish all our content on our 
mobi portal. I started using GPRS from May 2006 (Airtel), other than the 
main search engines I did not find many interesting Indian sites out 
there. The most disappointing part of GPRS last year was the speed - it 
was slow. A common man cannot think of activating GPRS on his phone 
without visiting the local mobile store, too complex a process.

The speed has improved and one can browse mobi sites better today. But I 
cannot imagine using my GPRS connection as the "primary" medium to 
access the net, i.e. give up my broadband connection and switch over the 
GPRS, I really don't think it is happening for anyone.

Everybody talks about broadband and GPRS but somewhere data cards have 
been forgotten. I see data card users (for laptop) have increased. Not 
sure under which category this comes under - the broadband sales manager 
would want it to be reported under his category and the same would be 
the case with the GRPS sales manager ;-) I ultimately had to buy Airtel, 
Reliance and BSNL (in the process) data cards as all were equally good 
and bad.

Coming back to the real question - what is the future of mobile 
internet. I personally feel "nobody" knows the correct answer, i.e. 
nobody can say with confidence "The number of users will be xx.xx 
million by 2008 March", however it is safe to say the user base will 
increase impressively. Not all portals have a mobi version, as we 
progress all portals will have a mobi version also. Content specifically 
designed for the mobile users is required on the net. The GPRS market 
will mature as the speed improves and content-n-utilities are available 
for GPRS users.

As of now I think users are using it to access information quickly and 
get some updates - cricket scores, news, tv listing. We provide 
classifieds on our mobi portal but we have kept in mind that very few 
will "post" from their mobile and most of them will be viewing from 
their mobile. So to begin with we will have more viewers than active 
bloggers in the Indian mobile internet space. For me mobile blogging is 
an overkill in India - not happening in the near future.

regards,

-- 
B.G. Mahesh
CEO
Greynium Information Technologies Pvt. Ltd.
Email: bg.mahesh at greynium.com
http://www.greynium.com/
http://www.oneindia.in/
http://www.click.in/ - Online Classifieds for India



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