From the time when you had big bulky phones with long antennas, mobiles have come a long way. Indians took to mobiles as fish to water, resulting in the telecom boom that we are now experiencing. This explosion in the number of mobile phones and associated services is here to stay. In fact, innovations in this piping hot field are taking everyone by storm. Gone are the days when you used your mobile phones to only talk. Powerful and innovative applications on this handy device have resulted in an all new ball game. This is an instrument capable of causing a mass impact.
The recently convened mBillionth South Asia Awards provided a wide platform for mobile content and application developers to showcase their talent. The event was attended by industry pundits and veterans who were expressed their views regarding the future of the market. An interesting comment made by the joint secretary of the Department of Information Technology (DIT) was that we are now in the ‘m’ age, leaving the ‘e’ age behind. India, with 584 million mobiles still has a density of around 51% compared to Sri Lanka which tops South Asia with a commendable density of 81%.
The boom brought with it a major competition in the telecom sector, resulting in the cheapest call rates in the world. Now, after the connection revolution is the time for the content revolution. The mobile has reached where the internet has failed. This gives way to innumerable applications focusing on bringing entertaining and utility based content to the hands of people. The Indian subcontinent is raring to develop in this field after Japan and China. With 3G auctions reaching astounding heights, 3G is one more area which has great potential.
The humble SMS itself has been used in many applications and services. The focus is also shifting slowly to rural VAS (Value Added Services), which is quite different from urban VAS. Entertainment does not sell as much in rural areas. Also, only those services survive that rural people think will improve their livelihood and quality of life. Telecom companies are giving impetus to application developers to come up with better content.
The problems start when the cost becomes high. Application developers need substantial monetary benefit for developing apps, but at the same time, it should be affordable to people. Indeed, people won’t hesitate to pay for apps that they find useful.
One area which still has scope is ‘m’ learning. There haven’t been breakthrough strides in providing ‘m’ solutions to this problem. An inspiring example in rural network is that some villages at 6000 ft in Nepal are connected wirelessly. They use internet and other mobile services, making life easier for them.
The Government also needs to realize this and provide tax and other support benefits for the industry. The future is no doubt bright, but the small hurdles have to be overcome before basking in the full glory of this industry. What do you think?
I think we should take inspiration from that "Nepal Rural Network" story mentioned in the above article. Indian Government need to realize the significance of Mobile Computing in Rural areas and start deploying wireless networks though out the Indian villages. Even young minds like us make a step further and start developing some assistive solutions to rural people to make their routine tedious life easy at low cost by using popular open source mobile computing framework "Android". By the way it is very good article nice compilation.
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