Hungama Digital Media Entertainment, South Asia’s leading digital and mobile entertainment company, has launched a unique Social Music on Demand service Aircel MusicConnect for Aircel subscribers in India.The service will enable Aircel subscribers to enjoy their favourite songs via interactive voice response (IVR) on their mobile device and through the mobile internet. What’s more, users can also update their friends about the latest music they are listening to and even share their playlists online (using # to Socialize) by using the social networking (Facebook, Twitter) features of the service. This is a first service of its kind in India; consumers can share their music preferences while they listen to it on their mobile phones. All these updates can be sent in real time, to their peer groups over popular social networking sites

To avail the service, a subscriber simply needs to dial 543219 (tollfree) and access IVR options to listen to their favourite music, set it as a DiallerTune and even download the Music to their Mobile Phone. The IVR options under this service cover music in 19 languages, making it among the most universal services in India. Users can enjoy music ranging from Bollywood, International, Regional, Devotional and a host of other genres and categories. Users can also share their music updates & Playlists with friends on Facebook & Twitter (Orkut coming soon) by using the ‘# to Socialize’ feature. Each individual user is allocated a direct dial-in to his playlist making the service very user centric and allowing them to Socialize their individual personalities based on the kind of Music they enjoy.

Gartner recently wrote about the 10 mobile technologies to watch in 2010-2011. These mobile technologies were selected because they will evolve in ways that affect corporate strategies, significant numbers of customers or employees will adopt or expect them, or they will address particular mobile challenges that organizations will face through 2011

The 10 mobile technologies to watch in 2010 and 2011 include:

1) Bluetooth (3 and 4)
2) The Mobile Web
3) Mobile Widgets
4) Platform-Independent Mobile AD Tools
5) App Stores
6) Enhanced Location Awareness
7) Cellular Broadband
8 ) Touchscreens
9) Machine 2 Machine (M2M)
10) Device-Independent Security

Source : Network Asia (Read the full article )

With the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) increasing the daily transaction amount using mobile to Rs 50,000 there is a sudden spurt of activities in mobile banking with some of the major banks announcing a foray in to this area. This is part of a trend that we are observing in mobile value added services (MVAS) that is moving away from strictly entertainment oriented towards utility based. Utility services can be defined as the ones that are of interest to a larger audience and which have transactional time value. With about half of our population subscribing to mobile services, what better way to disseminate pubic information than using MVAS.

Indian mobile VAS industry valued at more than Rs 7,000 crore has so far been dominated by entertainment services such as mobile music, ring back tones (RBTs), wallpapers and plain SMS. Though services such as RBTs have been a real success, the MVAS ecosystem players often paid little attention to other innovative services that can be of use to a larger audience. However, with hyper competition in the mobile services sector with voice average revenue per user (ARPU) continuing to decline, operators cannot afford to ignore public utility services. What are examples of such utility services and how are they beneficial to the masses?How useful it would be for the travellers if they are forewarned about the closing time of Bandipur forest (in Karnataka) while one is planning to make a journey in the evening through the thickets, instead of getting stranded at the entrance. Would not it be good if everyone is forewarned through SMS about the harmful effects of radiation emanating from the corona and the needed precautions to be taken during the astounding solar eclipse which we witnessed late January? Though one has been getting travel alerts from the traffic police in the metros about major procession in the city, it would be of immense use to get alerts periodically; even better, based on the location in the city or town one is travelling and the possible detours so that traffic bottlenecks can be circumvented. SMS alerts targeted at specific locations may provide better reach than the traditional public address system to warn people of catastrophic events such as tsunami and flash floods that are quick and devastating. In countries such as Japan and Sri Lanka, technology known as “cell broadcast” is used to send early alerts about earthquake and tsunami through mobiles to specific regions of the country.

There are a host of health-related public VAS services that can be provided, especially in the rural areas, to select target audience. SMS reminders and alerts can be sent to registered pregnant women on next medical checkups; to mothers of infants on next immunisation schedule; to patients on doctor’s arrival time; to nurses for attending and monitoring school health check-up programs in villages. For certain diseases such as tuberculosis, SMS alerts to patients on due dates for check-ups, and to doctors on the next doses of medicine to be administered to specific patients, will improve the efficacy of directly observed treatments.

Tourism Promotion Councils in districts such as Kanniyakumari in Tamil Nadu that earn substantial revenues from tourism can enable SMS-based advertisements for hotels in the area indicating room availability, prices and directions to promote a tourist friendly hospitality industry.

Farmers from far-off villages often go to nearby towns and cities once a week to participate in mandis to sell their agri products. More often than not customers do not know the advantage of coming to mandi and sometimes may not even know the venue and timings. Information on products and the mandi prices can be sent via SMS alerts so that customers have information and reason to come to mandi to buy products. Increase in demand will also encourage farmers to come to mandis to sell their products. Mobile devices, which are truly personal, provide an opportunity to learn anytime-anywhere. People in rural areas can be educated in languages using “word-a-day” paradigm through which they learn words, their meanings and pronunciations using voice SMS. Mobiles may be the only channel available in certain rural areas of the country for enabling banking and can be deployed effectively using the strong distribution network of the mobile service providers. Mobile payment and banking enable quick turnaround time for remittances, especially in rural areas as demonstrated by service providers such as Zain on in Africa.

Examples such as the ones mentioned above can be delivered by the ecosystem comprising of mobile service providers, the appropriate government/municipal agencies, and private content providers. So far, the various government agencies have not utilised the mobile services technology for disseminating public information. It is time that the agencies embrace this powerful and ubiquitous technology to disseminate public information for the benefit of the citizens. The service providers and content providers should also realise that utility MVAS remains an unexplored territory in India, however showing a good promise for the off-take of the still fledgling MVAS industry in India.

(The authors, Rajendra Ratnoo & V Sridhar, are collector of Kanniyakumari and Research Fellow of Sasken Communication. Views are personal)

Source : Economic Times

Came across an interesting report from Portio Research which says, mobile phone users sent more than 5 trillion text messages last year, creating a $150 billion market.

Microsoft is promoting its new Kin cell phones, aimed at socially networked young people, with an ad that we think comes uncomfortably close to encouraging sexting–that is, sending nude photos via cell phone.

Source: Textually.org

Flytxt, for over a decade, has run several mobile marketing campaigns, and has been providing a technology platform solution for the Operators. Through these years, we have closely understood and solved some of the challenges faced by mobile marketers. From conducting large scale campaigns, measuring the impact, to maximising returns on investment… the challenges are many.  We have compiled below, what we think are the top 10 Mobile Marketing Challenges:

1.    Current Marketing Technology is too slow

Today most products and services promoted by mobile operators have extremely short lifecycles. The success of such products relies purely on instant selling. Conventional marketing processes and generic multipurpose technology tools are designed for long-cycle campaigns, and hence are not effective in the new scenario. The marketer can be successful only if he can test offers and product variants, and come up with the most profitable recipe within hours. This requires a specialised, real-time mobile marketing technology platform with end to end workflow and usable tools.

2.    Subscriber Value Maximization not possible with Push and Forget Tactics
“We have to make the transition from playing the customer acquisition game to the value game … The industry has to now move towards managing customers,” comments Sunil Mittal, the CEO of Airtel (as quoted in Forbes magazine).  The key to creating value is engaging subscribers in a direct conversation and creating a lasting relationship based on it. This necessarily means a shift from the open loop “push and forget” tactics to a real-time customer lifecycle management. It involves sending right messages at the right time, listening to their feedback and using it to make future communications more relevant.

3.    True ROI Measurement is impractical and too slow

Most marketers measure the campaign effectiveness based on response rate. Though response rate is reasonably good metric, what matters to mobile operators is the return on investment, i.e., the actual money made. A part of the total revenue from a product could be a direct result of marketing campaigns. However, a part of it is also generated without any trigger from the marketers. In other words, some customers buy products on their own. Therefore the net impact of a campaign can be calculated only if we distinguish between the above two. Currently this is impractical and too slow with tens of campaigns per day and manual Excel techniques. Only a marketing technology that allows for automated, real-time monetary impact analysis based on control groups will help marketers to make quick and educated decisions.

4.    Unscalable Marketing approach for VAS Revenues

With stagnating Voice and Data revenues, the percentage of Value Added Services products increases steadily. As a result, the number of partners also increases and the question arises “Who should do the marketing for those joint revenues?” Partners don’t have access to the entire subscriber profile, and mobile operators cannot directly support the marketing of partners’ products. To leverage these new revenue opportunities, mobile operators need a marketing technology that allows the Partners to do effective marketing, while they exercise control over subscriber data and marketing policies.

5.    Lack of Real-Time data for Personalisation and dynamic Offers

Marketers understand the value of real-time data for maximising the relevance of campaigns and offers to subscribers. But currently marketers do not have access to real-time data sources. Operator’s BI and CRM systems have a latency of minimum 24-48 hours and by the time the data is transferred and analysed it would have lost its real-time value. Relevant offers for the mobile channel require an operational real-time mobile marketing database that provides fresh subscriber data to marketers all the time.

6.    Marketers are consumed with Manual Data Processing

Currently mobile marketers depend on manual processes to execute campaigns. Data files are being manually transferred, analysed, exported, transferred again, and uploaded for sending… the story goes on. This process is error-prone, slow, hardly scalable and above all hinders marketers from being innovative and creative. To get the brightest and most creative thinkers to exercise their potential, it requires a mobile marketing technology that automates all steps of the campaign workflow, including real-time campaign reports.

7.    Personalised Offers cannot be tracked and reward

Offers like “top up minimum 100 Rs and get 50Rs extra talk time” staggered for example by subscribers’ ARPU are proven to have high ROI. But the challenge is to identify conversions for an offer based on the eligibility criteria and fulfilling the reward to the customer. With tens of campaigns per day, it is impossible to keep track of it manually. It requires a flexible integrated marketing technology to enable sending dynamic personalised offers and fully automating their fulfillment.

8.    Limited Reach to Rural Populations

Rural areas have a rapidly growing subscriber base and mobile is the only channel to reach them. However barriers like multiple languages and low literacy rate make it difficult for the marketers to address the rural population.  To maximise the returns from the rural population it requires a marketing technology that allows for automatic language personalisation and the use of the voice channel for those who cannot read.

9.    Enforcing Subscriber Privacy and Spam Control

Increased competition, subscriber fatigue and government regulations make subscriber Privacy, Do Not Contact (DNC) list and frequency management an important part of mobile marketing. Most operators have some policies in place, but they have no adequate tools to enforce them, and hence run a high risk of violation of regulations. An automatically enforced solution to control frequency of messages and manage privacy policies is required. This is extremely important as the Operators could be fined for non-compliance.

10.    Marketing Inventory cannot be fully exploited

Mobile Operators have successfully exploited the push channels using generic multi-purpose tools. However, the interactive and real-time potentials of mobile are yet to be unlocked. Though Operators realise the opportunity, they are hesitant, as real-time marketing involves a lot of practical difficulties.  To monetise valuable subscriber touch-points, it requires an integrated technology that will help in rolling out real-time offers based on subscriber actions.

About the Author
Thomas Schuster is the Co-founder and Sr. Vice President – Product and Technology, Flytxt. He is responsible for the design and technology behind Neon, the company’s third generation mobile marketing platform. He has a decade long experience in mobile marketing technology. In this article, Thomas talks about the top ten challenges faced by mobile operators and alludes to the need of a third generation technology that will enable operators maximise their ROI on mobile marketing.

As per eMarketer estimates, mobile internet users in India will grow from 5 million in 2009 to 162.1 million in 2014 with a CAGR (compounded annual growth rate) of 100.5 per cent. The estimates give a clear year-wise growth as well. In 2010, mobile internet users in India will stand at 12.1 million which will go up to 30 million in 2011, 65.1 million in 2012 and 114.2 million in 2013.

Source: Telecomyatra

According to Industry experts who congregated at *7th VAS INDIA 2010*, the Indian Value Added Services (VAS) industry is expected  to touch a turnover of over Rs. 21,000 Crore by the year 2013. The event was organised by Bharat Exhibitions at Taj Lands End, Mumbai.

Mr. Subhash Dhar, Member Executive Council and Group Head – Sales and
Marketing, Infosys* quoted in his keynote speech that till now Internet was
considered a radical phenomenon but now the Mobile is all set to create a
similar revolution. Mobile Value Added Services are about to create a huge
buzz in the market for the masses.”The point was supported by *Mr. Uday
Sodhi, Chief Executive Officer, Balaji Telefilms* “The current Average
Revenue per User (*ARPU*) lingers around 8-9% however by the end of this
year we shall see a rise to about 12-14% with an extensive increase to
nearly Rs. 11,000 Crore.” “The future of businesses will be driven by
broader digital engagement with their consumers and will act as a catalyst
in the future economy” according to *Mr. Dhar*. He further added that all
ecosystem players will have to join hands to bring Mobile Value Added
Services to the masses.

With over more than 500 Million mobile phone users in the country,
penetration to various areas with multilingual diversities and providing vast
content like games, applications, astrology, Mobile banking etc. and related
services is a challenge which has to be accomplished. The emphasis was on
the 3G/4G aspect and providing faster access like broadband availability to
take MVAS further. *Mr. Shyam Mardikar, Sr. Vice President – Networks,
Bharti Airtel Limited* said “Telecom is a mature business and the consumer
is choosy, quality of services needs to be refined, optimised and
manifestation of existing services has to be done”.

*Shri. SS Sirohi, Principal General Manager & Head, VAS, Bharat Sanchar
Nigam Limited* spoke about mobile banking transactions focus on volumes and
diverse content provisioning, mobile advertising, Location based services
like GPRS which are in their initial stages. Nearly 7.5 Lakh customers are
using 3G BSNL, currently available in 300 cities and the target is to spread
it to 700 cities by July 2010. 50 Million ringtones are downloaded every
month. The Indian Premier League shall be merging with Youtube and the
cricket match can be viewed from the cell phone with a staggering 36 camera
view options. The speed of 3G is 3.5Mbps if the download speed is enhanced
or the bandwidth is increased, user will have an enriched experience by
downloading movies, games, and utilities at a faster rate. He added, new
customers, new platforms, new generators, new operators are joining the
market everyday so the opportunity is tremendous.

The MVAS will bring about a change in lifestyle of the common man according
to *Mr. Lloyd Mathias, President & Chief Marketing Officer, Tata
Teleservices Limited,* he elaborated his point by giving an example of a
fisherman from Kerala who has to sell his fish to the dealer at the rate at
which the dealer pays him, however with the introduction of MVAS, he will be
able to get the best deal available. The *chief guest* in the conference *Mr.
RN Prabhakar, Member, Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, (TRAI)* had a
similar opinion and focussed on how MVAS has become so important and
innovative for the telecom operators with the intense competition bringing
down the ARPU and the tariff. Finally he concluded the speech saying “MVAS
will bring about a huge change and improve the living standards for all the
classes and the market is just ripe for bringing about and to be a part of
the change”.

Wishing all the readers of WirelessDuniya a very Happy and Prosperous New Year.

Have a Fantastic year ahead.