Thomex.com
The success of mobile telephony in India has added new dimension to Value Added Services (VAS). Whether it's SMS, Voice Data transmission, internet access, music or information search, mobiles are fast becoming another extension of laptop and PCs. Thanks to the boom in the sector, a one-day International Conference & Exhibition on the subject was held here in Delhi on Friday, titled 'VAS Asia 2008'.
The show, organised by Bharat Exhibitions, was attended by large number of participants including wireless operators, handset manufacturers, content developers, game makers, service provider and other telecom, software giants. The turnout at the show was so huge that the organiser was forced to extend the show spread over two days instead of one, from the next year.
The VAS Asia had special relevance to India as the country has 220 million mobile phones users which are expected to grow to 500 million by 2010. India also happens to be the fastest growing cellular market in the world. The conference realised the fact that with ever rising cellular subscribers; voice will soon become a commodity. Service providers are experiencing low ARPUs and high subscriber churn rate.
The conference further pointed out that Mobile VAS accounted for 10% of the operator’s revenue, which is expected to reach 18% by 2010. The revenue, from mobile value added services, has already touched US $ 1.1 billion and is expected to US $ 2.74 billion by 2010.
Speaking on the occasion Arvind Rao, CEO & Co-founder, OneMobile Global said, "Today, the mobile VAS is still at the nascent stage what Internet was in 1989. The glorious days of mobile VAS is in the horizon when media, entertainment, sports, content, publishing all will converge in mobile. The Internet services like google, yahoo and others are looking towards mobile VAS for a robust revenue model," he said.
Rao further pointed out that VAS in years to come will create its own ecosystem and what started as ringtone and wallpaper download will soon grow into fresh, innovative mobile VAS with rich content and utility services. "India already has 35-40 million people using VAS," Rao said.
Giving an insight into the popularity of VAS, Pankaj Sethi, President, VAS, Tata Teleservices said that simplicity, easy availability and low tariff of VAS were the major indicator of its popularity among people. "The next thing which will soon find wider application be mobile commerce and mobile advertising. These will add new vistas of growth in the mobile VAS segment," Sethi said.
Usha Rajeev, leader Infocom Practice, PricewaterhouseCooper was of the opinion that the VAS market in India was still at the lower strata contributing to 10-12% of the total mobile generated revenue. "In Japan it has already reached 25% and with India looking for one killer application, it may touch new heights," she said.
The conference emphasised that Indian VAS will touch a turnover of over Rs 20,000 crore by 2015. According to PricewaterhouseCoopers, the Indian VAS industry is being driven by SMS with about 44% of the share, followed by new applications Ringtones & RBTs, GPRS, CLI and other VAS.
Elaborating on the encompassing role that mobile have come to play in today's life, Pradeep Shrivastava, Chief Marketing Officer, Idea Cellular, said that mobile are triggering a change in users' life by way of providing hosts of utility-based services like money transfer and mobile advertising which have a big role to play in making localised advertising popular.
Shrivastava pointed out that the context of the mobile use was changing fast with four out of ten new mobile users coming from semi-urban areas. He said that instead of making services directly a paid one, the users should be given an initial option of experimentation to get wider participation.
There are however, national passions which play a key role in the patterns of mobile usage. Pointing it out, Feyzal Akpinar, Head Content Services, Turkcell of Turkey said football is very popular in Turkey and we give option to people to download a complete match in real time on their mobile, which is highly popular.
"We also provide services like video download like the one on youtube. Traffic monitoring and mobile signatures are other popular and innovative application which has found wider acceptance in Turkey," Feyzal said.
Elaborating on the subject, Abhay Savargaonkar, senior VP 3G, Bharati Airtel, said that India, unlike other nations, will need multitude applications on mobiles. "In Japan, it's cartoons; in Korea it's games, but what would be India's DNA in VAS is yet to be determined. Probably, it will be a multitude application, looking at India’s vast population and interest groups," Savargaonkar said.
The other speakers who addressed the gathering included RK Agarwal, Director (Planning & New Services), Bharat Sanchar Nigam; TV Sriram, VP Technology, Bharti Airtel; Venkat Eswara, Marketing Director, Motorola; Rip Haris, Director of Product & Segment Marketing, Dialogic Corporation; Sangeet Chowfla, Chief Strategist Officer, Bharati Telesoft; Gaurav Kaushal, Senior Solution Architect, Nokia Siemens Networks and others.
