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What are the reasons for a sporadic increase in mobile data usage in the country?
It is true that there is a marked increase in the mobile data usage. Two years back, people opting for data plans were just 3-5 mn but now it is 20 mn, so it denotes an increase of around four times. The main reason is that data plans launched by companies have become very cheap. For instance, Aircel recently came up with a plan which offers unlimited data usage for just Rs 95. Vodafone also launched a similar plan in Chennai. And the success of these plans point to the fact that there is a demand for data usage in India. Indian market is now ready for mobile Internet consumption only the price point was the issue and that is fast catching up. Besides, the price of smartphones have also come down substantially. Easily there has been a drop of 30-40% in the price of smartphones. 3G and Wimax will further drive the market and the price point will further come down leading to a data explosion.

Which products are in the pipeline?
We were earlier focusing on SMS related products but now we would be focusing on other VAS products as well. We recently launched `Latitude', which is basically a location based service. This service allows to track down a person's location. Recently, we have also launched a voice based search service. Currently, it is available only for BlackBerry subscribers. Google Maps is available as a cheaper option and it uses mobile operators' cellphone IDs to help users identify locations, especially in cities.

Vinay Goel product head, Google

Why have you decided not to focus on SMS related products?
We are not focusing on SMS because going forward Internet on mobile would be able to offer better price points. Once that happens, SMS usage is likely to come down dramatically. Typically, the data plans currently on offer charges 10 paise for 10 KB. So an email of say 100 bytes would cost 0.1 paise as compared to an SMS of around 100 characters which normally costs Re 1.

Are you planning to launch products for the bottom of the pyramid?
Our focus is not bottom of the pyramid and we are looking at products for high paying segment who are likely to use more Internet. Going forward, we would be looking at products in the location based and social networking category.

What is the mobile usage pattern among Indian?
Search, email, and social networking remain the most important usage on mobile. One out of ten mobile Internet users use Orkut in India. The users are primarily in the age group of nineteen to twenty-five years. Orkut is the largest source of photo uploads in India.

Gagandeep Kaur
gagandeepk@cybermedia.co.in