siliconindia | | July 20178IN MY OPINIONA ugust 1995 witnessed a histor-ic event when the first call was made over a mobile services net-work. However the country was late in adoption of the technolo-gy as compared to the fact that the world's first calling over 2G network was made in 1991. Again, compare this with global scenario where countries such as Japan and South Korea had started rap-idly embracing 3G technology way back in 2001 while the 3G spectrum auctions itself were conducted around 2009 in India. Connectivity Spurs GrowthThe entry of 2G services in the country complemented well the economic liberal-isation policy embraced during the same time. Stakeholders within the government and industry could easily observe the im-mense benefits and correlation between mobile penetration and higher economic growth. As mobile connectivity across In-dia increased, so did economic welfare and empowerment of the people, particularly deprived sections. Gradually the convergence of telecom with the day-to-day life of the users resulted in emergence of new set of innovative ap-plications. Thus users had access to music, basic banking applications, and rich media such as video, informative services such as mandi market prices, critical weather infor-mation to fishing communities and the list goes on. Such applications were classified under the value added services popularly known as VAS services. This in way trigged the first level of demand for data services as the user experience on a conventional 2G network left much to be desired. Thus started the pursuits of stakeholders to scale up to next level of technology adop-tion and apparently it resulted into evolution from conventional 2G to migration to 2.5 EDGE networks and eventually to 3G. This phase also saw convergence of GSM tech-nology to CDMA with both the networks integrating to WCDMA for 3G. The innova-tion and co-optive approach adopted by mo-bile device manufacturers too played a very important role during this transition phase. EVOLUTION OF THE MOBILE INDUSTRY IN INDIABy Sanjeev Agarwal, Chief Manufacturing Officer, Lava InternationalHeadquartered in Noida, Lava International is an Indian mobile handset manufacturing company offering a wide range of smartphones and feature phones with the latest features & functionalities at affordable rates.
< Page 7 | Page 9 >