Mobile marketing: The rising star

Abhay Singhal, co-founder and head, global ad sales, mKhoj, says: “The recent trends points to the fact that more and more players cashing in on mobile marketing sector, which is still in its stage of infancy but promises a very bright market ahead. It has begun to find its mention as part of MVAS services.”

CRBT with its ease and intuitiveness has been major a success all around and has been the majority crowd puller but it is time to leverage on other segments too,” Sethi adds.

Debraj Tripathy, CEO, Onmobile, says: “There are several companies competing in this space (mobile marketing). Majority of them are leveraging on text space (read bulk messagin) segment and a few on WAP space.”

“Virtually there is nobody in the voice (AdRBT) space. As of now OnMobile is the only company to have invested in an extensive data warehousing and analytics system and team.”

Debasis Chatterji, director - operations, Netxcells, says: “Mobile advertising is indeed a nascent segment. But its unique features – has contextually relevant text and geographically targeted audience, it is easier to track ROI once system matures, it will be an additional channel of revenue for VAS player with increased voice & data traffic for operators and it will be an ad supported/low cost premium VAS for subscribers – gives it an upper hand when compared to other traditional medium of advertisings.”

GPRS connectivity and Internet penetration

“Slower adoption of data services in GSM (as opposed to CDMA) was an issue, but is changing rapidly with easier GPRS affordability. Data connectivity through GPRS is now easier and available on lower priced devices. That along with search and mobile Internet is leveraging data usage among consumers,” Pankaj Sethi opines.

“Richer applications are the call of the day to exploit the 3G environment. Verity’s SLIM is a ready application that will enrich the landscape for us. IVR (interactive Voice Recognition) and games are still selling but as the ‘novelty’ aspect of using the mobile for these things starts waning, we will see a massive adoption of applications around mobile internet,” Shivkumar Jagannath notes.

“The pace of Internet penetration and broadband has already changed significantly. The success of USB & data cards in CDMA is a live example of how mobile connectivity can simplify and accelerate uptake of Internet. 3G will help build Internet and broadband penetration, by providing an alternative path to the expensive, last mile fixed line connectivity,” Sethi opines.

“With new applications that demand adequate bandwidth on the anvil, all operators are rapidly augmenting GPRS bandwidth capacity and with the advent of 3G in the near future, it’s a matter of time that these constraints will be eliminated,” Tripathy notes.

“Low GPRS speed and bandwidth cannot be a constraint as it can be improved with the advent of newer technology. Despite the fact that only 10 percent of the India telecom population have access to GPRS, India still ranks second in the world when it comes to mobile traffic,” Abhay Singhal added.

“All said and done, internet has not given the last mile access yet. But there are clear indications that mobile Internet may just bridge the last mile and take Internet consumption on mobile to heights which world has never seen,” Singhal signs off.