Yesterday, I was on panel of Convergence India’s VAS in Indian telecom industry  and had a chance to see Telecom Value Added Services Industry’s challenges. Here is my take:

From one page newspapers and theatre to… silent movies to… television to… cable to… internet content on ones fingertips the media has gone through a rapid evolution. We talk about the shrinking global village but the true potential of media and its reach is yet to be unleashed. We have barely scratched the surface of Fourth screen – The Mobile (for the uninitiated the first three screens are Silver screen, TV screen and Computer screen), it is perhaps the most ubiquitous of screens in our lives today.

Going by the mobile penetration level India is perfectly poised to leapfrog the internet revolution to land directly into the mobile broadband revolution. It has already begun with the fast changes on all fronts of digital media including improvement in handset features, network bandwidth and quality & variety of content. Mobile has fast evolved from just being a device to talk to a centerpiece of our lives. Users are now looking for varieties of content delivered on the screen which is always there with them.

Traditionally, VAS business in the country has been driven by the ABC genres which are Astrology, Bollywood and Cricket. The first wave of applications was focused on ABC since the consumers were exploring mobile as a medium and were getting used to it. In the first wave of mobile VAS, service providers could get away with sending the same content to the large and varied Indian population e.g. Bollywood content to every user whether he is in Tamil Nadu, Gujarat or Bihar or Delhi.

Demand patterns in India are however changing and we are already seeing a silent shift. With the users becoming savvier and more comfortable in accessing content on the mobile, they have started looking for content more specific to their taste and their needs. Further, with the addition of millions of customers from the semi-urban and rural areas, demand for differentiated, long tail content is growing. And a lot of this demand will be on Voice and not an SMS or WAP as has been the traditional thought process. The majority of the Indian mobile consumers who are not English literate are much more comfortable to use voice-based content in their local language.

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Telecom is one of the few sectors that has not been hit ( or hit as badly) by the economic slow down world over. Closer home it  is one of the sectors still showing steady growth, however as is true for all industries in this time  it is a more sane and steady story now. It is coming of age of the hare!

This is also reflected in the kind of investments that we see in the sector. Getting a little more specific lets look at the M-VAS industry. (  I would like to attribute the following observations to a recent story in DNA Money http://www.dnaindia.com/report.asp?newsid=1238568 and One97 view of the industry )

Consolitation seems to be the key. A number of players in the VAS space are taking the merger and acquisition (M&A) route to expand their businesses. Experts believe the kind of money being raised by companies in the M-VAS space currently hints at a possible surge in mergers and acquisitions. A key indicator is the significant rise in the number of large quantum or Series B fundraising by mobile VAS companies.

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Usually, LinkedIn does not allow Alice to add Bob as a connection unless, Alice somehow knows Bob – Bob and Alice may be from the same school or organization, or may have worked together in the past and so on. In FaceBook, Alice and Bob once connected, are considered “Friends”. Though FaceBook does allow Alice / Bob to optionally specify how they know each other, the attempt to me seems more like a ploy on the part of FaceBook to elicit meta-data information on the various relationships that exist within the system, as well as more user profile information. On the face of it, I have not observed this information affecting how FaceBook differentiates between my different friends. Irrespective of how Alice and Bob are related, FaceBook treats Alice’s relationship with Bob in the same manner as it treats Alice’s relationship with say, Jack the CEO of a 5000-strong company, where Alice works as a trainee engineer!

At least in so far as its positioning is concerned, LinkedIn ignores the fact that real people have virtual worlds – it does not let you buy chicken feed using some LinkedIn $$ or suggest that you try finding people based on their A/S/L/I. LinkedIn should continue to ignore it simply because it focuses on the notion of business networking – a rather real world need!

Real World is different! The Real Real World of today includes the real world and the virtual world. In the Real Real World, people distinguish between the people they would want to ‘groom’ – my brother, my sister, one of my many cousins I am particularly fond of and so on, my bar-hopping buddy, and the people that they would not mind being an acquaintance of, and the people with whom they would only have a business-like relationship, and including but not limited to the people they would want to avoid at all cost – I confess that I sometimes add a contact to my phonebook just to be sure that I do not pick up the phone the next time I receive a call from that number!

That is one part of the real world ‘connections’. Real people’s need to escape their real world and engage in the non-real world is as real as those people themselves.

Jack will, at times, want to be a fighter pilot chasing the bad guys! This is his virtual world. And I believe, that Jack’s want is as real as Jack, the CEO himself! So, Jack will have in his list of the people he knows, his employee Alice, his daughter Emma, and his “co-pilot” Maverick. Of course, all but Maverick are real people in Jack’s lives. Maverick is a fantasized entity, who is Jack’s co-pilot in a virtual world, and is a role that is probably being played by another John, who is as real as Jack.

In the above context, these all-encompassing terms such as ‘connections’ or ‘friends’ or ‘buddies’, in my opinion, are probably incorrect terms in the real world!! I would say that the ‘list of names’ that I see there are not my connections, they are the ‘people I know’ to a lesser or greater degree. Some of them I know well, some of them are my close friends, some are my relatives, some close, some distant. I have some relationships with each of them. Some relationships I value more, some others less. In certain contexts, my fantasized relationships may become more important to me than my real ones!

One could say, that the relationships I value are my connections. Alternatively, some of the people I know, I consider them as my connections, and hence value them more – “I know the Mayor!”.

As the CEO of the 5000 people company, the 45-something Jack will not think of the 18-year old Alice (the trainee engineer) as one of his connections. He will not care whether Alice is having shushi or rajmaa-chaawal tonight, or whether she likes rock or jazz. Unless of course, Jack has begun to like the witty notes that Alice leaves once in a while for others to read.

But what about Alice? Alice would probably give herself and her entire neighborhood a treat, on the day she receives a hello from Jack!

And if instead of Alice, we were talking about Emma, Jack’s 14 year old daughter, Jack would probably want to be the first to know when she has a running nose!

What should change?

People I know and my Connections should be distinguished and differentiated from each other. Connections are people I groom and it is an asymmetrical kind of relationship. By accepting an add request, I am only agreeing that I somehow know the other. I get all these requests on LinkedIn or on FB. I accept them or ignore them because rejecting them I consider as rather un-social. Sometimes, I accept them because I see no harm. Most of the times these people just occupy the space on my ‘friend list’ and I do little with them. When I send a request however, it is mostly when I consider connecting with the other worth it. I perceive such people to be somehow important to me today, or someone who may become important tomorrow.

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It was only when I brought recently launched (July 08)  Nokia E71, I realised that Nokia has discontinued their support for BlackBerry and there was no BB client available for E71. And in One97 Communications, I was expected to be always accessible on my official emails. And then started my search to find free push client for my mobile.

My initial search on Google showed me few options to access our official emails on Google Apps. The options were Seven, Emoze, Mail For Exchange, Beta Nokia Messaging client, etc. First thing I tried was Mail For Exchange and educated immediately that Google Apps is not Exchanged based or compatible. Then it was the turn of the most promising client Seven. When I downloaded and installed Seven I was very exited and hopefull and after 5 – 6 days and few posting on the Seven mailing group and blogs, I found myself stuck in a no mans land. Every second person on web said Seven is the best and I looked like an idiot.

Then I tried Emoze and there I was exited to see my first push mails on my E71.  And there was no stopping and I continued to trust and use Emoze and in between they came up with newer versions and I religiously upgrade the same on my mobile. With one version upgrade rollback I never faced any problem. Yesterday when I upgrade the firmware of my mobile I downloaded latest version of Emoze and i was surprised to find that now it supports only 1 email account and I need to upgrade Pro Version if I need mails from additional accounts.

Althought the cost is approximate Rs 700 per annum, but I decided to start my search again for free push client. This time I decided to use Google’s Gmail for mobile Ver 2.0 a access mails. I was easy to get it installed and configure for my both Google App and gmail mails. But it did not take me long to realise that I am not getting any new mail alerts except a brief vibration. I searched everywhere to enable alert and then decided to ask google for an answer and got none. And so I started my search again and Nokia Messaging client was my next option. Although I avoid beta softwares but still decided to give Nokia Messaging client. And since the time my first mail rushed in on my mobile and I am totally impressed by this application. It has a very intelligent & impressive UI and it shows email status details on the mobile main screen. Only issue noticed by me was it s not possible to navigats to previous or next message by pressing NaviKey. Well it is too early to rate this product but overall a good product and shall put a post on the blog if I encounter anything interesting

Last night I decided to upgrade firmware of my Nokia E71 to the latest available V200.21.118 when I saw the very long list of changelog posted on few of Nokia / Symbian blogs.  The improvement in  WLAN, VOIP, Camera, Email functionality was of interest to me.

Well as everyone is aware firmware upgrade of any product is not for weak hearted and it is equally tough for Nokia phones. Before proceeding with firmware upgrade using Nokia Software Updater, you are required to make backup of our mobile data using Nokia PC Suite as all your data is wiped out when you flash the firmware of your mobile.  Although all your data gets backup properly, but at the time of restore, PC Suite cannot restore back your most important of all the contact list. And Yes you also end up losing other important data like stored messages, calendar entries, notes etc.

It is a known issue and your only saviour is Nokia’s own tool ‘Nokia_Contact_Transfer.exe’. But it is not so easy to locate this tool on Nokia site and I had to spends one precious night  in November 08 just to locate it and all other tools I could lay my hands on were paid products. This tool is cool as it auto detects and shows all backup files stored on your desktop.  And it helps you select correct stored backup file and recover / restore all your contacts data from the backup file. And this tool is so fast that you refuse to believe your eyes.

Anyway I am happy that I upgraded E71 and it was really worth the efforts I had to put in. And I do have a story to tell about my upgraded N71 but that will be coming tomorrow.