'Entrepreneurs have enormous opportunities in mobile space'

By Kukil Bora, SiliconIndia   |   Thursday, 30 September 2010, 19:35 IST
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Bangalore: Mobile applications are a rapidly developing segment of the global mobile market today. In case of India, with over 600 million mobile phone subscribers, the country is regarded as a mobile hotspot globally. With the increasing demand of mobile apps, there are a lot of opportunities for entrepreneurs generating in the mobile space. "Enormous opportunities are there in the mobile space for entrepreneurs these days. Because of the revolution in original design manufacturing, devices and applications can be created at a very low cost, without any sort of compromise with the quality", said Shekhar Kirani, Vice President, VeriSign India and Angel Investor, on the occasion of Mobile Apps conference (MAC 2010) organized by Siliconindia in Bangalore. Emphasizing on the significance of the low cost devices and apps, Kumar Shiralagi, Managing Director, India, IndoUS Venture Partners told about the increasing interest of the telecom companies towards the rural areas in India. "The needs of the users living in the rural areas are not similar to that of the users in the urban areas. Telecom companies as well as mobile application developers need to try newer ways which can cater to the demands of those users in the rural areas", said Shiralagi. On the emerging 3G spectrum, he further said that after the implementation of 3G, there would be more mobile apps in the market and the number will keep on increasing. While more and more players are betting on the mobile applications market, applications need to be unique to survive the competition. "Uniqueness is the key for any new application and to get that uniqueness a good understanding of consumer needs is required", said Samir Kumar, Managing Director, Inventus. According to him, solving technical challenges is much easier than dealing with the understanding of consumer needs. Answering to a question by Satish S. Chandodi, Test Manager at Nokia, Bangalore, on the future of mobile applications in India, Kumar said that it may take some time for the market to take off in India, but in coming three to five years, the market will grow higher. Adding to the point of uniqueness of a particular mobile application, Sachin Maheshwari, Principal, Draper Fisher Jurvetson India said, "An entrepreneur should also keep a close eye on his peers. He should know about the current demand of the market and should figure out whether the users will pay for the new application or not".