- Only 1% Indians use mobile to access Internet
- Compared to India's less than 10% penetration today, Malaysia has 56% and China has 28% penetration of Internet!
- Malaysians consume 35 percent more digital media than Internet users in China and 150 percent more than users in India
1. Local advertising to pick up
We all crib for seeing ads while watching our favorite TV shows and movies. But remember, it is these ads only that finance the TV channels to make more programs for us to watch. Similar thing needs to happen on mobile. Advertising which is local. Imagine you are in Allahabad. You open a website on your smartphone and see an ad for food in Allahabad restaurant nearby. Not possible today. If it becomes a possibility, I am sure advertising will fund lot of major developments possible in this field.
2. Cheaper but sophisticated apps
I know there are zillions of apps available for cheaper phones as well. But none of them must have had download more than 50,000 times. We should make apps which are not just cost effective but also customized to Indian needs (for e.g. app for language conversion from Hindi to Telugu"?
Also, I have always wondered why dont we have Twitter and Facebook coming out from India? We only have Posterous by an Indian (Sachin Agarwal) in the same league but even this was done in US.
3. Content and websites to be made mobile savvy
Have you seen New York Times on your internet-enabled mobile? It is fantastic to navigate and read. Why can we not have such interface for Indian sites? This would help. Considering the penetration of mobile phone today is about 40% - about 6 times that of Internet!
4. Subsidizing broadband in India
Just like Government of India has subsidized lots of items for us including free electricity for farmers, loss making PSUs like Air India suppoorted by GOI, etc. Why can we not accept that Internet is a great enabler in today and make it cheaply accessible for everyone?
5. Building trust for internet in India - Need of good statuary laws
I do most of my shopping online. But still, I fear that my passwords might be compromised. Government should have very clear and communicated cyber laws. precedents should be setup for people who compromise privacy and leak videos, passwords, credit card details etc. Will help all of us in trusting and hence usage of internet. Simple logic is wherever there is a money flow, business model can be carved and be made to work!
Source -
1. Internet world stats
2. McKinsey report on Digital Asia
3. Photo - Gettyimages
3 comments...:
Wonderful post Anshul. My 5 cents, each corresponding to your points:
1. I like this. Wouldn't Google's admob be good for this?
2. I firmly believe that inventions (and mostly, inventors) are formed in college - Google and Facebook being two good examples. So how about launching an HCL app contest limited to college kids? I'd be happy to brainstorm if you want to fund it :).
3. This is a chicken and egg problem. Why should ToI spend so much money on making a site that such a small number of folks use? Need to think more about that IMO.
4. Good idea, but in my opinion any subsidy on broadband should be accompanied by passing of laws to make free internet access of some form available to everyone.
5. I agree with this one wholeheartedly. Very good point.
cheers,
-A
Thank you Animesh!....coming from a techy like you makes me feel proud :)
1. Admob will be good and like Aakriti pointed today...could be a potential business idea for LBS like Loopt, Foursquare, etc
2. In fact there is already such thing happening at HCL - will introduce you to the right person on twitter
3. Have you seen NYT and how it has adopted to mobile and iPad version? The scene in India is equally bad. Print is declining while Internet is booming. And before the doomsday arrive for the industry, they better start investing in innovative ideas or they should perish as well like in USA
4. Actually !
5. Thank you Thank you! :)
Anshul: I disagree on #3. Would be good to compare the revenue that ToI gets from readers who buy the paper and do NOT read news online, compared to the revenue it gets from its website. I think the former is orders of magnitude higher.
I think that it still a while to go before folks start switching from paper to online news in large numbers in India (I am talking about all of it, not just the 30% that live in cities).
So, do we have access to such data?
-A
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