MUMBAI, INDIA: India's telecom scene is expanding tremendously. At present, the mobile subscriber base is over 300 million and is second to China. The market is expected to touch 700 million subscriber base by 2012.

According to a recent report by Confederation of Indian Industries (CII) and Ernst & Young, India's rural population will comprise over 60 per cent of the total telecom subscriber base by 2012.

All these massive figures are good enough for the estimated Rs.. 5780 crore mobile value added services (MVAS) industry. Further, the expanding subscriber base remains the key to MVAS growth and also the chief source of revenue generation.

Though, the revenue is shared discretely among the mobile operators, technology enablers, content aggregators and content owners, it still remains a lucrative business.

After local players’ run in this segment, now Sony Ericsson, the cell phone maker, is slowly but surely making its way into the MVAS market on the content side. Even Nokia has tied-up with multiple local content providers and has the Ovi brand or services – specifically to caterVAS.

The Japanese-Swedish venture has strategic plans to tap the Indian MVAS market.

Recently, the company launched Sony Ericsson Developer World (SEDW), targeted at third party mobile phone applications and game developers including individuals and companies that can create innovative applications and ideas for its GSM/UTMS phones. SEDW's first edition was held in UK back in 2001, then in China, in 2007 and now in India.

While speaking to CyberMedia News, Sony Ericsson's senior manager and SEDW's head, Jens Greve said, “We cannot do business sitting in Stockholm, but have to come to India to work with locals that help to understand the culture, users psychology and interest. So we would like to have local like-minded partners that help us to create new kind of services, which are rich and light applications for mobiles using Flash and Java.”

The company's Capuchin project is aimed at creating and integrating User Interface (UI) and User Experience (UX), along with applications, designers and developers, and uses Java API for bridging Flash and Java.

Further, “The same kind of rich experiences you get on the Internet and web, we want to do same here on the cell phones with rich contents including applications and games. It will benefits the user with rich UX and UI using WAP technologies,” added Greve.

About Indian users being charged higher for MVAS, Greve explained, “We would like to develop innovative applications which have multi-functionalities with great features, rich UX and UI, hence the cost reduces for the users.”

Moreover, on mobile advertisements' use for lowering cost, Greve said it is still a long way to go, the telecom service providers will need to educate the customers.

However, he called Indians, probably the fastest in adopting new technologies and products; and pointed that India also follows the same global trends of sharing contents, social networking and navigating tools using cell phone and Internet.

Considering India as a part of the absolute emerging mobile market and he stressed on the local content developers' role in MVAS market.

“We need to succeed in attracting the local players and content developers. India has lots of technically educated people, students and talented individuals that can develop and create innovative ideas or applications for Sony Ericsson phones,” said Greve.

Hence, 'I@ being famous' campaign is to tap and recognize the local talent – programmers and developers and offer them a world platform, he concluded.