Indian Mobile Market: The Multi Billion Opportunity Date:   Thursday , September 08, 2011 The past few years, India has seen a sudden rise in the consumption of mobile devices – smartphones, tablets and more. In a conversation with SmartTechie, Samartha Raghava N, Founder & CEO, Smart Sky Electronics & Research, talks about this the changing scenario of Indian mobile market and the multibillion opportunities it presents. How do you see the boom in mobilization in India going ahead? In the new flat world, with complex ecosystems for livelihood, mobility has become almost as essential as a basic necessity. With increased urbanization and the complex eco-system for livelihood, the amount of mobility of humans has increased. Urbanization in India is increasing by the day and will tip to greater than 50 percent by year 2030. It is becoming increasingly important for people to stay connected on the move, leading to an upsurge in consumption and production of such devices such as smart phones and tablets. How are mobility devices affecting convergence? Will seamless connectivity across devices be possible in the Indian context? We can think about convergence in several different ways. One is in terms of the actual industries converging, such as communication, entertainment, and computing. Another is converging voice, video, and data over a common infrastructure or within a common computing platform. Smart homes and entertainment systems already exist, but India has not seen heavy penetration in convergence in this space. However things are changing now. With increasing internet adoption, convergence at all levels is becoming a reality. It is already possible to control set top boxes remotely, soon entertainment devices, home appliances, home controls, and consumer electronics will follow suite and will see adoption at all levels. What are the new trends driving the telecom market in India? The industry is going through a second wave of technology and services revolution in India. With the recent foray of third generation (3G) and broadband wireless access (BWA) spectrum and introduction of Mobile Number Portability, the consumers are now poised for services which were uncustomary so far. With the introduction of newer network technologies, we also see an upsurge in mobility devices that cross our interpretation of conventional mobile handsets. Lifestyle aggregation is an important driver in the telecom market now, with these devices helping users converge the entire array of social, personal, and professional interactions on to their hand held devices. With operators putting focus on network rollout in semi-rural areas and increased focus on the value added services (VAS) market, there is an unprecedented change in the type of voice and text services that consumers have used so far. The consumer is becoming more enamored by multi-various applications on their mobiles and more demanding of their communications connections and devices. Mobile devices are now becoming a multi utility gadget and a means to media convergence. How do you think Android is set to revolutionize the mobile internet space? Android adoption is accelerating across the globe. In the last year alone, there have been 100 million Android device activations and currently there are over 400 android based devices in the market in over 110 countries. The Android browser is one of the best browsers on the mobile market today. It is faster, more flexible, and supports Flash. Android is open to everyone. It has also roped in important industry players in this initiative and this created huge synergy. A non-exclusive strategy that produces products selling across many communication service providers, and the backing of so many device manufacturers, which are bringing more attractive devices to market at several different price points, are among the factors that have yielded its growth. Smart Sky is focusing on lifestyle aggregation and convergence of users’ social, personal, and professional interactions on to a handheld device. We expect Android’s wide and easy penetration to play a critical role in adoption of mobility devices.