Plain Talk? Not anymore

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The long nurtured niche in the hearts of poor in South Asia that was once occupied by a crooning radio has now been captured by mobile phone that helps them get talking and a lot more.

According to a recent survey by LIRNEasia, a Sri Lanka-based Asia-Pacific information and communication technology policy and regulation capacity-building organization, of a hundred bottom of the pyramid (BOP) households now have 50 TVs, 38 phones, 28 radios and one computer.

The finding should not come as a surprise as the South Asian countries are witnessing an unprecedented growth in the telecom space. Number of handsets has surpassed the number of radio sets in Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.

Prevalence of TV, phone, radio and computer in South Asia and around is: Bangladesh (52, 41, 13, 0); Pakistan (68, 39, 24, 3); India (50, 38, 28, 1); Sri Lanka (80, 64, 77, 4); the Philippines (63, 50, 52, 1); and Thailand (75, 70, 64, 12).

Industry experts say it is an obvious phenomenon, with handsets turning in to a swiss-knife kind of solutions. Rural mobile penetration is now the focus of the service providers in these countries where the mobile markets are heading towards maturity.

In India circles like Chennai are touching near 100% mobile penetration in that case the operator has to go to new markets. The mobile is fast becoming a one-stop-shop solution. And the manufacturers are building products on applications that click with the buyer and these rewards are resulting in rewards as big as over 10 mn handsets sold every month.

Interestingly, earlier the market was inundated with FM chipset handsets, which were largely of interest to those living in urban cities. The users look for value for money, any manufacturer that can not realize the needs of his potential buyer will not survive.

Tata Teleservice's 'Radio Phone' is a respite for a user in the area that does not have an FM radio. The model is the first of its kind in India that can access Am radio services and also among CDMA phones in the world. This enables telecom users in rural and semi-urban locales to listen to radio services.

The phone provides information instantly that a user wants and serves more than one purposes. For a BOP user the best bet is to get the most by spending the least. What more could a poor man ask for but a gadget that entertains him, gives him information in the form of mandi bhavs, weather alerts etc.

Another interesting aspect that the survey looked at was frequency of using the phone for business purpose. Since utility is not quantitative, LIRNEasia asked the users if they used their phone for business purpose at least once a day, 70% of the BOP population survey said they did.

The industry pundits feel that a day may come when handsets may surpass the number of TV sets. According to MultiMedia Intelligence report, the worldwide unit shipments of multimedia feature rich mobile phones will exceed 300 mn units in 2008, outnumbering shipments of TV sets.

That may sound over ambitious at the moment. If technologies like MobileTV takeoff in a big way then that might be possible, but that is not likely sometime soon. MobileTV is yet to prove itself in the role of a personalized TV in pocket.

According to LIRNEasia, their data in 2006 showed that the largest proportion of Indians at the bottom of the pyramid were using public phones. In 2008, the role of the public phone has been taken over by 'my own mobile'. Can phone out pace TV sets? May the cheap and best win.