Tones – Types and consumption Monday, Jun 29 2009

Invention of Mobile Value Added Services (Mobile VAS ) has been the biggest boon to Mobile /telecommunication service providers today. Millions of Indians are subscribing to VAS mainly because they think its either cool or enjoyable to use!. Specially, tones is very popular among may mobile users. There are many types of tones offered by service providers. Some of them are: 

1. CRBT – Calling party listens to music instead of the regular tring-tring tone
2. Ring tones - Called party sets a musical ring tone for the incoming calls when it rings
3. Busy caller tune - Tone set by mobile user when busy and cannot receive calls
4. Video tones -  Subscriber gets a video display along with music when some calls (similar to ring tone but with video)
5. Missed Called alerts – message received  by called party when he/she miss receiving the call
6. Voice SMS – Recorded message (own voice) sent by caller to the called party
    

Here is a report which talks about popularity of tones in urban India (March/April 2009 mobile users) . Finding out “who called” and informing people when busy” are the two other most popular Value added services!

Tones - consumption in urban India

Missed call alerts is used by almost 110 million urban Indians while Talk/Voice SMS is used by almost 80 million.

How often do you use these tones?

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SMS contest – statistics and source of contest in India Tuesday, Jun 23 2009

Short Messaging Service , more commonly known to mobile users as ‘SMS’ is a short text message of 160 characters which can be sent/received by any mobile user and from any handset. It is easy to use, inexpensive and quick way to communicate among mobile users.

Today SMS is not just used for peer to peer messaging, but has become popular among advetisers, marketers for promoting their products and services, media, contests, voting and polls etc.

Let us look at how popular it is among SMS contests participants in urban India.

SMS Contests

30% of Urban Indians have participated in a SMS contest with Males being the more participative gender. Almost 60% of Females have participated in 1 to 3 SMS contests and though this is higher than their male counterparts, in frequency of participation males outshine. This is as per mobile users in April 2009.

SMS contest participation - Men : Women in urban India

SMS contest Source

There are various channels in which SMS contests are promoted. It can be through TV shows, radio channels, magazines and newspaper, Online through Internet etc. However,TV is the most effective medium in garnering SMS contest participation with over 86% of urban Indians who participated in SMS contest found out about the same via TV followed by newspaper and website.

SMS contest Source

How often do you participate in SMS contest?

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mCommerce – Statistics and usage in India Monday, Jun 22 2009

mCommerce has become very populuar among the mobile users today, simply because of its flexibility of been able to may purchases and financial transactions  at anytime and from anywhere. There are various services offered by mCommerce service providers. Some of the very popular ones are mbanking, mticketing, m-recharge and m-payment.

Here are the results of the latest (April 2009 mobile users) Urban Indian mobile users using mCommerce services  on their mobile phones.

mCommerce subscribers in urban India

Recharging pre-paid card or paying monthly phone bill is the most popular m-commerce activity used by almost 98 million urban Indians!

What is restricting you from using mCommerce on your mobile phone? Is it lack of GPRS connectivity, handset incompatibility, service cost or something else? Do share your thoughts.

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Mobile Search Engines – popular ones and consumption Thursday, Jun 18 2009

When you want the right answer at the right time, all you need is the Mobile Search engine enabled on your phone. Search engines provide a variety of relevant results based on the information required by the mobile user. Basically, Mobile search engine is an integral element of Mobile Internet services which display the required information to information seekers (mobile users). All that the information seekers need to do is to enter the keyword of the required information in the search engine text box (In the home page) and search engine displays all the results relevant to the search keyword. Google, Yahoo, rediff, Ask Laila, MSN/windows live, AOL etc are some of the popular mobile search engines used widely today. So user can find what he/she wants with fewer clicks and fewer hassles all from the convenience of user’s mobile device.

Search Usage

Based on a survey conducted in May 2009 on urban Indian mobile users, it is noticed that 5.76 Million Urban Indians use Google on their mobile phones! Google is the most preferred ‘mobile’ search engine, used by over 5 million urban Indians. Yahoo! is a close second with 4.58 million users.

Used Search engine on mobile phones

Frequency of usage

Google is not only the most preferred ‘mobile’ search engine but is also the most frequently used, almost 1 in 2 urban Indians who use Google do so almost on a daily basis.

Used almost daily

Phone models – on dissecting Google power users by phone models, Nokia N72, 3230 and Sony Ericsson Z550i are three most popular phone models used by Google power users.

How often do you use your phone for searching information and which search engine do you think is most useful for mobile users?

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Instant Messaging – Significant element of Mobile 2.0 Tuesday, Jun 16 2009

The next generation web2.0  i.e Mobile 2.0 has become very popular among mobile users today. This is simply because it helps people from all part of the world interact easily and send/receive instant messages between mobile users in just fraction of a second which most users think is awesome!. Want to know more about Mobile instant messaging? then please read further…

Mobile Instant Messaging (Mobile IM)

Is the ability to send text messages between two or more users instantly through a chat platform via the internet. Mobile instant messaging as the name suggests is the exchange of real time – text messages through mobile phones by mobile users via mobile Internet. Other than sending online messages to users in ones contact list, users can also send offline messages which will be delivered to the receiver (mobile user at receiving end) when the user at the receiving side signs into the messenger. Some of the other key features supported by IM platforms are buddy list (contact), sharing files and content, creating and chatting with groups (private and public) etc . Mobile IM is very useful medium from business as well as from social networking stand point. It helps answer quick questions and clarifications, in terms of coordinating and scheduling meetings and keeping in touch with friends and family.

Source of Mobile Instant Messeging
 
There are multiple methods in which one can access and use Mobile IM service. It can either be downloaded on the mobile phones or some handsets come with pre-installed IM software and some are even accessible by using the Web browser via mobilephones is the user has GPRS (Mobile Internet)connectivity.

Lets take a look at some real statistics of IM source for mobile users, based on a survey conducted in May 2009 for March/April 2009 mobile users it is observed that Pre-loading of IM applications on phones garner most usage among urban Indian mobile users. A quarter (25%) of all urban Indians who use IM over their phone do so from an application that came preloaded in the phone.

Sources of Instant messaging (via mobile phones)

Popular Mobile IM service providers
 
There are many players providing IM services today. Some of the well known providers are Google (Google talk), Yahoo (Yahoo messenger), Microsoft (MSN messenger), ACL wireless (M-messenger), ICQ wireless (ICQ), AOL (AIM) etc.

Popular instant messengers (among mobile users in urban India)

Yahoo! Messenger is the most popular messenger service with urban Indian mobile users, with a 18% market share followed closely by Google Talk (17.8%).
 
Which  Instant messenger do you use and like most? Do share your experiences and what features do you think is the most useful.

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Mobile 2.0 – Next generation web 2.0 Thursday, Jun 11 2009

Mobile 2.0 refers to mobile internet services which include collaboration, creating user generated content, networking and sharing amongst mobile users mainly in the form of social networking, mobile blogging . It is an interactive service through which mobile users communicate with other users in the form of messaging, chatting, capturing, listening, sharing and viewing content. This blog is mainly focused on providing real stats on popularity of some of the social networking sites among urban Indians.

Popular Social Networking Sites

There are various networking sites which have very popular today, specially among the teens. To name a few orkut, facebook, hi5, linkedin (professional networking), many dating sites etc are first ones that cross people’s mind. Here are the results of some data gathered by conducting survey for urban Indian mobile users.

Popular Social networking sites (Via Mobile phones)

Essentially, Orkut is the most highly used Social Networking site on the urban Indian mobile landscape. Orkut and Facebook are the two most popular social networking sites, used by 11.4% and 6.7% of urban Indians accessing social networking site via their mobile phones anytime between February 2009 and April 2009 respectively.

City – wise popularity of social networking in India

On looking at big 7 Indian cities, Delhites are the most social networking savvy folks accounting for around 10% of all social networking site users (via Mobile phones).

Social networking sites - Indian urban mobile users

Which site do you like most and how often do you use it? How useful do you think are these sites to be able to keep in touch with your friends and family? Will be good to know your thoughts.

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Caller Ring back Tone: Set a pleasant tune for your caller Friday, Jun 5 2009

A special feature through which the calling party can hear a song or music instead of the default “tring tring” tone. It is a subscription based service, in which the subscriber is the called party.  Service can be activated or deactivated whenever the subscriber wishes to do so. Various service discovery channels are available to download and activate the ringback tone of subscriber’s choice

• IVRS – Subscriber listens to voice based menu and can select the required ringback tone
• WAP – One can browse through the WAP portals and download the ring back tone
• Web – One can browse  through the online portal and download the ring back tone
• SMS -  Type a short message with preserved keyword for the ring back tone and send to the pre-defined shortcode
• USSD – Select from the text based menu by dialing the predefined service code

CRBT is available in various categories such as instrumental, bollywood, holly wood, devotional, mimicry, regional songs, bhajans, funny clips, movie clips, based on occasions etc. Subscriber can set different ring back tones to different callers if they wish to do so, or just set one tune for all the callers. Other features available in addition to setting the ring back tone are personalize, copy, gift, shuffle, album(group of tunes).

Today CRBT is become very poplular among the mobile users making it the second most consumed  VAS content by mobile users after SMS services. It is mainly because it is enjoyable, handset independent and above all affordable. This Mobile VAS service is provided by all the Indian operators in all part of India. It is more commonly known as hello tunes (Airtel), Dialer tunes (Aircel), my tunes (Spice telecom), callertune( Vodafone, Reliance) , Play tunes (MTNL) etc in India.

What do you think about this service? And what is your experience with  caller ring back tone.

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