Mobile / VAS data - Part 1

One of the crazy things about India, is how everyone wants to be information hog! Its just amazing how insecure and petty people are with sharing information. Although I am not a proponent of "Information WANTS to be free"; I am a staunch supporter of the I-really-really-really-hate-information-hogs-who-hog-for-no-real-reason.". I am all for confidentiality, etc w.r.t. commercial enterprises, etc. but public and for-public institutions being like that, really gets my goat, so to speak. But that is a topic for another post. Not this one.

In an effort to start collect, collate and consolidate market data, I am going on start making a collection of market data that I am able to slurp, peppered with some of my thoughts.

Starting off:
market research report

which leads to believe:
-- That mobile subscriptions at almost a 19x multiple over all Internet/Broadband subs. 24x if you just compare against Internet.
-- I wonder how close mobile penetration figures tally with those of TV and cable ?
think mobi-TV ! :p
-- WAP is an untapped market! Largely, because of cost, hungry telcos and lack of infra by telecom providers.
Less than in 1 in 12 people use VAS. I would wager that's largely due to the SMS bombing that happens.
-- 6.1m GPRS users. That's like 3% of the overall user base! The optimist in me, screams - Growth opportunity! ;)

Mobile pundit has some interesting facts in its article. Reproducing an excerpt here:

" ...
Indian Idol got more than 55 million votes via SMS between Nov 04 to Mar 05. At Rs 3 per SMS, that is Rs 16.5 crore (Rs 165 million). The telecom companies made Rs 11.5 crore (Rs 115 million), and Sony about Rs 5 crore (Rs 50 million).

Radio Mirchi gets 40,000-45,000 SMSes a day.

Indian music industry got about Rs 140 crore (Rs 1.40 billion) or 20% of its legitimate revenues from mobile music in 2005.

Shridhar Subramaniam, MD, Sony-BMG says a hit film can generate Rs 1-1.2 crore - about 5% of an album’s sale on mobile revenues. Its big mobile hit of the year is Rang De Basanti.

Saregama makes half its money on ringtones through its catalogue. It “sells nothing but ringtones. With new releases, we have the rights to images and wallpapers”, says Sarkar.

The big media firms — Star, Sony and BCCL, among others — have set up entire divisions for mobile entertainment.

Star CEO Peter Mukerjea has maintained that mobile telephony should eventually bring in 30% of the company’s revenues. And Sony will set up its own backend for digital downloads this year. ..."

Two more ... 1 here ...

Currently, the Indian market is split roughly at 60:30:10 between mobile operators, media companies and aggregators. Mobile operators argue that they make the investment and control the consumer, so they should keep a lion’s share of the mobile data pie.

and lastly ...

India has one of the lowest spectrum allocation per GSM operator in the world, about 6 Mhz against, over 25 in the UK or over 20 in China.

Just 15-20% of the phones in India have colour screens and/or cameras.

The revenues from VAS sector in India have been growing at an annual rate of 30 per cent and is likely to grow at a faster pace in the coming few years ...

Another useful data link

Revenue share between telcos & content providers / aggregators is 70:30, substantially more skewed in favor of telco than in other countries - further aggravated by lack of payment mechanisms.

That's enough to chew on for a bit. Will add more later.