Mobile search market – not so hot
I have to agree with Om over Piper Jaffray projections of $11 billion for mobile search market. Atleast half the cell phone users in the US do not use SMS actively. Atleast 75% of the users have outdated handsets and are locked in a year or two agreement. Its only users like Om who jump onto the latest handset in the market 
What are your thoughts on mobile search and which technology would you bet on in the mobile search domain?
Just like how Google is unveiling Writely, the Web Word Processor, which is speculated to be a cool and different from our routine MS-Word, so also, for the Mobile space it will be a totally different app. My experience suggests that its not just “e-”, “v-”, or “m-” nabling of technologies, it has to undergo some kind of transformation to be cool to use which ultimately makes it HOT in the market.
Finally, I don’t think US is the best market for m-search & commerce. With just 207 Million subscribers in the US at the end of 2005, it is way behind the number subscribers in the East(Japan, China, Malaysia and India). The East and the Europe have worldclass 3G & 4G infrastructure with highly affordable subscription rates for the mobile savvy consumers. While for the internet era, it was the opposite. I guess Mobile 1.0 is a whole different game than Web 1.0 and Web 2.0.
Indian cellular operators market share(GSM & CDMA) Q1-2006.
At the end of Q1-2006, Indias cellular tele-density is very close to 10% with a net subscriber base of 93 Million(GSM & CDMA combined)
Tata Idea, says Mumbai based Tata group
Idea Cellular, Tata’s and Birla’s JV(after exit of AT&T) for providing GSM cellular service ran into rough weather when, Kumar Birla declared that Telecom was a thrust area for the A V Birla group. Tata’s kicked off their telecom venture in early 90s with investment in Idea and later when Reliance opted for CDMA licenses, Tata’s joined the bandwagon too conflicting their earlier investments being done by diverting money from different group companies. [Take this link on SuchetaDalal.com]
Insiders say that Tatas needed cash to expand its Tata Indicom services and hence they decided to sell out their 48% stake in Idea to Maxis Telecom. Not a bad timing considering the SENSEX at 11,600 & the fair valuations the Telecom stocks are enjoying. Due to joint venture clause, Birlas matched the Maxis offer and bought Tatas stake at Rs4406 crores(approximately USD 1.0 Billion) making Birlas the sole owners of Idea cellular(C Sivsankaran holds 1.7%). So is the Idea cellular with 7.72% GSM cellular market share valued at just $2.0 Billion ?
India – GSM Cellular Operators Market Share Q1-2006
It happens only in India ?
The Indian mobile subscriber base is growing at such a rapid pace(60% YoY) that it is soemtimes impossible to make calls from busy places like Mumbai’s Dalal Street or New Delhi’s Connaught Place during peak hours inspite of mobile operators making provisions for additional capacities. Thus people tend to carry two phones to keep connected.
GSM subscribers have a simple solution to their problem of carrying two phones. They can get an additional circuit added to their existing phone and can insert two SIM cards(Airtel & Hutch) as shown here for a Nokia 3310. Cost, mere Rs300 
Depending on the modification, switching between service providers may require switching off the phone. But for the phone shown above, all you need to do is just press #3370 and if your existing carrier is Airtel it will automatically switch to Hutch and vice-versa. Oho Ya! No Bluetooth or Infrared to sync your address book as you can store on the same phone and access no matter who your carrier is.
India’s GSM subscribers base up by 68% in FY 2005-2006.
GSM subscribers base in India grew by a whopping 68% for the year ending March-31-2006. The GSM subscribers base now stands at 6.9 Crores(69 Million) which was at 4.1 Crores(41 Million) at the end of March-31-2005. The GSM subscriber base also saw a sequential quarterly growth rate of 18% corresponding to its previous quarter ending Dec-31st-2005 which was at 5.8 Crores(58 Million)
Taking a closer loook at quarterly growth rate, most of the subscribers were added in A – Circle (Maharashtra, Gujarat, A.P, Karnataka and T.N). A – Circle witnessed a growth of 20%, Metro – Circle witnessed a modest 12% growth and B – Circle witnessed a robust growth of 14.5% over their previous quarter.
Also in my earlier post, I had said that Spice had added 100,000 customers, while figures suggest that it is 113,137 customers in the states of Karnataka and Punjab
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