The unique combination of products and
services enhance the personalized user application experience. Mobile utility
solutions offer a blend of technologies with functional benefits to cater to the
social or professional requirements in various verticals. With the significant
growth of the mobile phone market worldwide, the impact of mobile utility
solutions is being seen as an evolution of the existing telecommunication
solutions. With operators managing niche value added services (VAS) for specific
and yet unexplored markets globally, mobile utility solutions has become a big
market opportunity.
India Scenario
The mobile VAS industry has been growing fast, registering an y-o-y growth
of 300% in the last three years, which is likely to continue in the coming years
also. Mobile network operators are focusing on utility services, as the ARPU
with voice service is going down as the opex and capex keep increasing. High
mobile penetration in India has made possible the feasibility and high success
rate of mobile utility solutions. Enterprises and individual users demand for
their business process efficiency and personal communications, a higher value of
services and utilities while on-the-go. Earlier it was call-on-the-move; and now
it's ttransaction-on-the-move, TV-on-the-move, and services–on-the-move.
Emerging as a dynamic business sector, VAS
domain has seen a major uptake in entertainment solutions; which includes the
use of data, voice, and video services. Screen-3 approach will be used not only
with mobile, but also with other converged media in the near future. With the
emergence of m-commerce and utility based solutions, the platform enabling all
types of applications and usage with flexible mediums like SMS, USSD, IVR, MMS,
web, SecureWeb, WAP, mobile/IPTV, etc, and with the opening of bandwidth for
various applications like video call, M-TV, and DVBH offer a scope of higher
uptake for the same. The mobile utility solutions have evolved enormously,
resulting in the subset and routing towards transactions of an economical value
for the service providers in the entertainment space.
Transforming Peoples' Lives
With the world increasingly becoming mobile day-by-day, utility VAS services
play a crucial rule in people's lives, as these services offer a great scope in
enhanced and effective usability for end users. The uptake of these services is
likely to grow in years ahead, as offerings are getting popular with people. In
the converged world today, VAS offers valuable utilities for end user, with rich
and limitless possibilities for various types of convenient communication and
entertainment services.
Enterprise Mobility
Mobile utility solutions gain high priority among enterprises, as this
results in high productivity of their employees and process improvement. The
scope of enterprise mobility holds a strong market potential for service
providers and others too with more user-friendly, easy-to-use versions of email,
calendaring, and corporate portal access applications amongst others.
Service providers are no longer simply
network operators, but are evolving to become providers of rich, interactive
media, productivity services, and retail experiences. This suggests that service
providers are not only challenged with a need to quickly deploy new services,
but also to measure and be accountable for those services.
Market Potential
Mobile solutions have evolved from a mere communication service to a
plethora of information and varied customized solutions to serve the enterprise
requirements. In the changing market scenario, mobile solutions will fuel the
market for a large chunk of the revenues for service providers in the near
future.
Today, mobile VAS in India is focused
around a gamut of services around the technology platforms of commerce and
utility. The future implementation will encompass several new and exciting areas
in utility solutions such as mobile Internet, location based services, mobile
advertisement, and regional content based services.
Maturity of the VAS market will give
impetus to the market for m-commerce and utility applications in India .
Favorable government policies and advances in technology are encouraging service
providers to explore innovative ways to address the mobile telephony needs of
India's rural population.
The challenges of domain expertise across
the areas of entertainment, commerce, advertising, location, etc; and the ever
evolving innovative technology have created a huge market requirement for niche
professionals.
Challenges
Major advances in the adoption of mobile utility services will not happen
until high-bandwidth networks are deployed for a faster delivery of services.
The current speed of GPRS is only 128 Kbps. To provide consistency in terms of
technology and security, installation of commerce-capable cellular
networks-which can route real-time transactions over the cellular network to a
remote payment gateway and guarantee security for the transaction-is a must for
m-commerce to gain credibility and popularity among subscribers as a safe and
user-friendly option for money transactions.
Technology understanding and acceptance is
considerably low in the rural areas of India. Multiple languages will always be
a challenge to provide the services and support. Mobile users also need to be
educated and encouraged to start taking buying/selling decisions via mobile, and
to look at mobile as an alternative to a debit/credit card.
The different parties involved in the
entire m-commerce value chain-like wireless infrastructure providers, wireless
service providers, certifying authorities, applications/software providers,
equipment manufacturers, credit card companies, and banks as well as media
houses and the global brands-should coordinate and come together to establish
the industry standards for m-commerce transactions.
Several VAS companies specialize in
end-to-end enabling of solutions with the managed services which brings together
content, technology, and device expertise to ensure an enhanced digital
experience to its customers. These services serve as an effective mode of
informative connections, and bring in innovative technologies of interactive
communication.
VAS services traditionally start off with
low margins; and as the business model suggests, most of the revenues are
transaction driven. So as volumes pick up, margins increase significantly;
sometimes more than 40%.
Scenario Abroad
The mobile utility services have evolved well in mature markets, as compared
to India. In mature economies, checking a bank account balance or recent
transactions is easy and quite common. Doing commerce transactions on-the-move
using mobility channel. P2P, remittance, fund transfer; and various other
merchant transactions on the move are quite prevalent. Commerce in the trusted
environment will be the next generation revenue channel across the globe, and
mobile penetration will enable high transactions.
In India, and especially for our rural
population, access to financial services is far from easy. A large percentage of
the population may operate on a cash-only basis. Also, in mature economies, it
is common to regard m-banking as just another form of payment channel, enabling
access to bank services over SMS or WAP; but with a limited value compared to
traditional banking. High-growth economies see m-banking as a tremendous
development opportunity.
Rajesh Parmar
The author is GM, technology solutions, head, commerce and NFC initiatives,
CanvasM
vadmail@cybermedia.co.in
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