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.

Some of the leading media houses have started working on their digital strategy in right earnest and there have been some movement on using the mobile media. This trend has caught up and now regional media houses are also jumping onto the bandwagon. However so far traditional media’s use of mobile medium has largely been limited to (tele)voting, contests and polls. However there is lot more to be harnessed and synergies to be utilized.

Mobile should be looked at by the media houses both as an enabler for its other properties and as a source of revenue. Some of the advantages that media houses can look at from the mobile media are the following:

• With the growing interest in long tail content traditional media should use the combination of the mobile media and its existing properties to heavily increase interactivity and make the communication with its readers and listeners two-way. This will address one of the biggest challenges.
• Developing of a regular relationship with its target segment. This is a utopia which is quite difficult to reach in this era of hundreds of channels focused on all kinds of content. This dream can very well be possible by utilizing the mobile media to engage the customers and touch them on a daily basis
• Monetization of existing content by only repurposing it for the mobile screen.
• Utilization of multiple business models to drive additional revenues by every media house
• Expanding the reach to a much broader audience. This is especially true for local media houses
• It can work as an additional source of local news and user generated content on the lines of citizen journalism

In India it’s the mobile handset and not the computer screen which will drive the digital content consumption. This unique nature of India’s digital landscape will entail that media houses create a digital strategy specifically for India which is focused on engaging the customers through voice and through highly differentiated and local content.

This article has been written by Team One97!