Mobile Internet Is it the next big thing in India ?

We had been struggling to increase our Internet base and PC penetration but slowly a new realization has happened to all the companies that instead growth lies in a format which has a much wider reach than any other medium in India and this medium is Mobile the fourth screen as this week's business world calls it. It has emerged as the alternative to cinema, TV and the computer screens — all put together. Now, it promises to change the way an average Indian entertains himself and conducts business.

Some of the reasons for the hype over mobile internet are

• Total number of Mobile users in India are more than number of TV households in India .
• India's internet based mobile revenues have jumped from anemic $150 millionto $700 million within 2 years.
• Nokia's service Mosh's most users are from India and it is in talks with indian providers to offer its service Ovi in india.
  
• Companies like Bharti are trying for licence from SBI that will allow people to remit money over mobile.
  
• Reliance's non SMS services accounted for 75.4 % of total data revenues.
• All the Internet biggies starting from Google and yahoo to portals like Cricinfo and startups like Mundu are creating applications for the mobile internet.

There are some serious drawbacks which are hindering the growth

• Telecom Operators in India keep 70-80 percent of revenue compared to companies like NTT Docomo of japan which shares 90% of revenue with the operators and served as catalyst for mobile internet boom in Japan
• Out of the 30 million subscribers figure 10 million belong to Reliacne's R world only.
• Feature rich handsets are not affordable.
• Lot of services including Google's local searches are pretty crappy on mobile

This is an example of how the Internet economy works


Satish K., a restless 25-year-old techie from a Gurgaon-based software firm, logs on to Airtel’s network using his Nokia N 95 handset. He gets to Google and searches for Nike, clicks on the latest offering from the world’s largest shoemaker, checks out its price tag and logs off without buying the shoe. What heisn’t aware of is that with his idle browsing, he has just triggered a transaction in the mobile internet space. Nike will pay Google a click-based fee for being the conduit for a potential customer and Google, in turn, will share an undisclosed proportion of the revenue with mobile operatorBharti Airtel.