The tradition of mobile market is continuously shifting to other horizon, now mobile payment has become quite popular worldwide. However, the Indian market is somewhat behind in this aspect than other matured markets of the world. Generally, online shopping in India is not up-to-the-level; however, an advent of number of retail giants has created a mobile friendly ecosystem in the country. Recently, we have elaborated an Indian Telecom giant “Tata Docomo” inked a deal with the country’s largest online deal portal “Sanpdeal” to provide SMS alert to folks related to products and services of their localities at discount rate.
Airtel has putted its all afford to persuade Indian banks for Open wallet service to folks. The telecom operator is endeavoring to provide number of services by associating multiple banks through single wallet to users, so that they could deposit the cash in Airtel Money from multiple banks (where they have account). The service will also privilege them to transfer their money to other accounts or withdraw the money according to their wish.
Recently, the Finish mobile handset manufacturer “Nokia” has inked a deal with two Indian telecom vendors—Vodafone and Airtel. The deal will facilitate Vodafone and Airtel subscribers to download apps from Nokia Store without an use of credit card, the amount will be deducted from their prepaid balance or will be added to their monthly phone bill. However, the mobile handset manufacturer has already tied-up the same deal with another Indian telecom operator “Reliance” in the prior year, but question is here that why the handset manufacturer has taken so much of time to extend its deal with other telcos in India?
Undoubtedly, India is one of the biggest markets of the Finnish handset manufacturer in terms of revenue generation. However, company’s market share is continuously declining in the country due to increasing demand of Samsung and local brands handsets. Nokia Store, erstwhile Ovi Store, is not as matured as Apple and Google’s app stores. Last year, the company launched Windows Phone based its Lumia 800 and 710 model, and this year, it has released Lumia 900 model. In these models, the apps are being downloaded through Microsoft’s Windows Phone App Marketplace, not from Nokia Store. It’s quite clear that Nokia is unable to generate revenue from its apps on Windows Phone platform worldwide.
After teaming up with Reliance, Vodafone and Airtel, the company would have a greater opportunity to lure a vast numbers of Indian folks towards its Nokia Store. The users would not be bothered about how to pay the cash for the apps or need to have credit card. However, Nokia is presently offering two most popular apps– “Angry Birds” for Asha 303 model for just RS 5 and “Gravity” (a popular social networking app) for Rs 35–at the nominal price. Nokia’s “WhatApp Messenger” is quite popular among Indian women, play three times more compare to men across the country.
Recently, Google announced more than 15 billion apps download from its Google Play Market. But it’s astounding me a lot that Google has not yet deployed “Operator Billing” with Indian telcos. India is undoubtedly one of the fastest emerging market around the world and Android penetration is substantially increasing day-over-day across the country.
One thing is pretty clear that Google’s teaming-up with Indian telcos will lure a large number of folks towards Android platform. However, it will benefit to both in the sense of, if any telecom operator is offering apps download privilege to folks from Google Play Market across the country, definitely, it will attract more numbers of the subscribers towards the particular networks. If number of users will increase then obviously, number of downloads will increase. In other words, it will create more revenue directly for the app developer and indirectly to the operators. However, in the last year, Uninor announced to bring operator billing and India-centric mobile apps on Android Marketplace (now Google Play Marketplace) for Indian users in 2012, but it’s yet to come.
