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| Wednesday, April 30, 2008 |
| MOTOYUVA W270 Hit Retail Stores |
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Motorola has launched the MOTOYUVA W270 in the Indian market. This is a flip phone with built in MP3 player and FM Audio. It has dedicated keys to control the Audio and can be operated even with the flap closed. It can have an expandable 2 GB memory.
 The best feature of this phone is "Hinglish predictive text software" indicating the need for localization :-) It can store upto 500 names in its phone book. Overall its a basic phone which comes with 256 MB memory card + stereo headset and USB cable. Suggested retail price for MOTOYUVA W270 is Rs 3,500.
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Published on Wednesday, April 30, 2008 at 8:35 PM  |
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| Target 500 Million Subscribers by 2012 |
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India is currently the second largest wireless market in the world leaving the United States at the third spot. If you have ever wondered how the wireless market in India will grow, here is the bar chart that shows the projections.
 Circle A and Circle B will have the maximum subscribers and most of the growth is projected to come in FY09 and FY10 when the subscribers will hit 405 mn. |
| Published on at 11:59 AM |
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| Tuesday, April 22, 2008 |
| Value Added Services Market |
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 The value-added services (VAS) account for 8% of the mobile market's revenues in India, and non-SMS services account for 65% of VAS revenues.
CRBT (caller ring-back tones): This constitues bulk of the VAS market share at 45%. This is a popular service in which the calling party hears music chosen by the called party (instead of the ringing sound).
Voice portals: 13% market share. The fastest growing VAS service of all, this has in the last year, become as popular as CRBT. This service enables users to select music, jokes or other items of interest by dilling into an IVR.
Premium SMS: Second largest revenue contributor at 32%. This is distinct from regular SMS, as it is typically A2P (application to peer) and meant for use in real-time polling, interactive TV, consumer marketing and requests, etc.
Other data (e-mail, games, on-deck content): Users having phones with data capability (WAP and GPRS) can access e-mail and other content from their mobiles. |
| Published on Tuesday, April 22, 2008 at 2:17 PM |
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| Monday, April 21, 2008 |
| Send Free SMS from e-Mail - 160by2.com |
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 160By2.com the FREE SMS startup in India powered by Mobile Advertising has introduced yet another feature - SMS from E-mail to Mobile.
This is introduced after several Indian IT companies started blocking the website of 160by2.com. All you need to do is insert the recipient's mobile number in the "To" text box followed by your username in the "subject" and the content of the SMS in the body of the e-mail message as shown in the picture to your left.
Kindly note that message size is still restricted to 80 characters. The e-mail id from which SMS is being sent should be the sams that is available in your 160by2.com profile.
This makes it convenience for folks to keep in touch, however, you do not have access to the huge archive of funny messages that is available only on 160By2.com. |
| Published on Monday, April 21, 2008 at 1:48 PM |
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| Thursday, April 17, 2008 |
| Comparison of Paymate + mChek payment services |
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 Have you ever tried mobile payment services like Paymate or mChek ? We had an exclusive review of Paymate mobile payment system in India. However, I tried mChek and found it to be more user friendly than Paymate. Here are some differences between the two competing services.
- Paymate is like using your Phone to pay merchants as a pre-paid card. While with mChek, your Credit Card is tied to your mobile number. [it really scares me sometimes with Poor security Indian companies have]
- Paymate balance on your phone can be transferred to other phone while you can't do the same with mChek
- Authorization is tedious with Paymate because you need to send an SMS within certain time and will also cost you Rs 3 / message. While in mChek, you need to just hit the Reply [message Service Reply Command] and enter your 6-digit Password to authorize the transaction.
- Paymate is accepted by large number of merchants in India, while mChek is still in nascent stage of adoption.
- Paymate is currently accepting Net banking + Visa cards while mChek accepts Visa & MasterCard.
If you differ from my views, kindly feel free to paint me in black & white. |
| Published on Thursday, April 17, 2008 at 7:32 AM |
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| Wednesday, April 16, 2008 |
| Vodafone to launch Apple iPhone ? |
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 News was leaked early this morning that Apple is planning to launch the official version of iPhone in India in Sept-08. Like elsewhere in the world how Apple has tied-up with a mobile operator for selling its handset, it is believed that it has chosen Vodafone in India and Australia. Expected launch price for the 8GB old version is Rs 27,000. Why would one BUY it from Vodafone at a premium when an unlocked version of the same is available for mere Rs 18,000 to 20,000 :-)
Also we had an informal chat with one of the Telecom Analysts and he was skeptical that the Indian TRAI would allow only Vodafone to sell the phone as it would attract Monopoly clause under MRTPC act. |
| Published on Wednesday, April 16, 2008 at 1:02 PM |
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| Tuesday, April 15, 2008 |
| Orkut Mobile Lanuched with limited features |
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 Google powered social networking site Orkut, the most popular network for Indians has gone live with Mobile edition.  The site can be accessed with a GPRS enabled phone at http://m.orkut.com [On your left is the screen shot of the Login which I took on my N70 and Opera mobile browser] The right one shows a profile of some "Internet Evangelist". Not all features are accessible on the mobile version.
 You can search for users and view their profile, scrapbook friends. Group search is absent in Orkut mobile at the time this post was written. However, we were expecting a lot more in the mobile version like Group messaging by means of SMS and other innovative means of communications to keep in touch. IndyaRocks has done a good job in Mobile social networking space, while Orkut just chose to port it to WAP. |
| Published on Tuesday, April 15, 2008 at 8:28 PM |
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| Wednesday, April 02, 2008 |
| Airtel breaks barrier - Wins largest deal |
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Bharti Airtel which features - Talk to breaking barriers in its Advertisement has clinched a historic and probably the largest ever subscription deal by any mobile service provider in India. Airtel has bagged an order for 100,000 connections from Indian Railways. This deal is for the closed user group [CUG] services that enables subscribers to make calls and send text messages to other subscribers in the group at much lower tariff.
Railways employees in this CUG can communicate for FREE. However, if they have to make calls outside then they have to pay a premium. The tariffs are comparable to that of BSNL Cellone and in some cases lower.
This is probably the single largest deal as the Indian Railways is the largest employer in India. Will Reliance come with a better offer for other central government organizations ? |
| Published on Wednesday, April 02, 2008 at 1:02 PM |
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