The 4th and final panel of the IAMAI Digital Entertainment Conference held at Mumbai this week was on mobile entertainment.
The panelists included:
- Viren Popli - Sr. Vice President & Head-Mobile Entertainment, Star India
- Probir Roy - Co founder & Director, Coruscant Tec
- Manoj Dawane - Chief Executive Officer, Mauj Telecom
- Srinivas Gopal - General Manager Marketing, Idea
- Salil Bhargava - CEO, Jump Games
Viren Popli - Sr. Vice President & Head-Mobile Entertainment, Star India
The Convenience Factor
All devices spoken so far did not have the C in it. i.e. the convenience and the other advantage is that it is the most penetrated device in India today.
Mobile gets the leftovers’s
No one is creating content for Internet and Mobile - Internet is living off left overs from the TV and print space and adding incremental revenue. Similarly with star we are creating content for TV. When we say that mobile and internet is going to take users away from TV and print then those in TV and print wont engage in internet and mobile content creation. We need to talk instead of incremental revenue. Also this business is nascent as the revenue share is still nominal at 3-5 rupee price point for millions of users on mobile.
Size of the video on the average phone is as good as the youtube size now and the size of the screen wont matter rather than the usability of the device. In 2-3 years there will be 1000+ channels but how do you deliver this given that DTH can screen only 200 channels.
On 3G in India
Im counting on GPRS costs dropping after 3G comes in.
Probir Roy - Co-Founder, Coruscant Tec
Its taken vas 10 years to hit 1B$ it will take 2 years to hit the next billion. India will skip the fixed line model.
Entertainment content will be a key driver of mobile revenues
Anything to do with entertainment in India will be big. VAS driver will be entertainment.
Not Happy with Industry structure
Im not happy with the industry structure and thats why I sold my company to Mukta arts because it helped me go directly to operator. Thats why we did backward integration and tied up with a content provider. So if I lock myself with the source of content which has not been sold on mobile in the last 20 years things are better when approaching an operator.
Manoj Dawane - CEO, Mauj Telecom
On Applications that make sense on Mobile
Most of us talk about what will go on the bearer. Is there an app engaging enough for user and monetizable for advertisers and can attract enough users for operators? Mankind is intrigued by classified like property, matrimony and cars. Even the online has seen successes in these verticals. Can someone build a mobile app around these and build in the numbers?
On Telecom networks and their role in VAS
Content is produced not for a medium but for human beings and a target market. I believe that telecom networks actually act as sachet’s for delivering content in form of ringtones or gprs downloads. VAS of yesterday is commodity of today and VAS of today will be of commodity of tomorrow.
Dissemination of content that telecom networks do is an opportunity for a google for mobile.
On 3G in India
UK went 3g in 2002 and 6 players paid 52 million $ and 3 sold their licences to others. I have a feeling that 3G will be used for voice. As india is a bandwidth starved country spectral efficiency will be used for the first killer app i.e. voice.
Srinivas Gopal - General Manager Marketing VAS, Idea Mobile
Voice is a large market for india and entertainment is consumed despite bearer. We have done rajshri audiosodes and there is a demand for audio content and we have seen good traction on the same.
In japan mobile gaming is very high due to NTT DoCoMo and pc gaming is big in korea due to cyworld Cyber worlds. May be we need a list of what India is playing. Gaming needs to be promoted by celebrities in order to increase adoption.
We are in advanced stages of discussions with news agencies to provide alerts in marathi for commodity prices.
Salil Bhargava - CEO, Jump Games
iPhone Impact
A positive trend is that mobile gaming is showing signs of picking up. Trivia based games for non color phones. In terms of Mmorpg its a long way away. Globally online and mobile gaming the line is blurring. Convergence is being compounded by iPhone from a content perspective.
We are not a Gaming Country. And early games sucked!
Connective gaming in India is tictactoe. Casual gaming is what will do well in India. Mmorpg wont do well that early on the mobile side. Gaming took off on the wrong foot in India as gaming players focus on number of games and not quality or experience of gaming. Most of those games were junk. For a user that was a terrible experience and I have finished a game in 1 1/2 minutes and there were 1000’s of such games and many of them on random bollywood movies.
On Licensing for games
Licensing is still a big part of this biz.. for eg if i put out a salil bhargava football game no one wil buy it. Its hard to build an ip and hence it needs to be a manchester united game.
We are clearly not competing with the console. In india for it to be a viable business we are still a few of years. iPhone is a paradigm shift as far as mobile gaming is concerned. The istore is doing more revenues than any operator. When will impact in India be felt? I think it is a very long time away.
Q & A
Probir questions
If 3G is used for voice and at current price points for voice would it justify the capex for setting up 3G network.
Manoj answers - If I were an operator i would provide premium services for voice on 3G for the corporate.
Viren Popli - You could very possibly see post paid customer gets shifted to 3G and the pre paid stays on 3G.
Srinivas - The killer app for 3G is ugc video and video conferencing. I dont completely agree with Manoj.
Audience - IN UK 3G has driven on deck activity by Orange which had 5 tv channels for 800 rupees for 20 mins. There has been very little off deck activity.
All in all this session was possibly the best in the day with interesting insights from all participants and contradicting views on what will happen when 3G comes in.
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The third panel at the IAMAI Digital Entertainment Conference focussed on Online Video and Gaming. The panelists of this panel were:
- Ajay Khanna - General Manager, EA Games India
- Bruno Goveas - Head Marketing & Product Management, Akamai
- Parminder Singh - Business Head, Technology, Google India
- Ashish - CEO, Ibibo Web Pvt Ltd
- Rohit Sharma - COO, Zapak Digital Entertainment Pvt Ltd
- Panel Moderator - Jaspreet Bindra of Microsoft
Ajay Khanna - General Manager - EA Games India
Top Global trends in Gaming
1) Boost your recession immunity play a game.
2) Gaming is one of the most cost effective ways of entertainment
3) Casual gaming is 2 B + dollar biz globally
4) Music related games 1.2 billion dollar games Rock band, guitar hero, dance dance
5) Girls interest in gaming is increasing
6) MMO’s - Money and Micro transactions - Micro transactions are more popular in asia i.e. china and korea
Some futuristic Insights
Everything will be a game in Online.
Future of the console - MMO console gaming
Apple’s Steve has revolutionized gaming: Mobile gaming on iPhone.
Bruno Goveas - Head Marketing & Product Management, Akamai spoke on Akamai’s solutions.
Parminder Singh - Business Head - Technology, Google India
- Storage is key for digital entertainment
- Over half of the videos on youtube are seen atleast once a week.
- Spoof of shakira got 13 million views versus thousands of views to the original video
International Example of Impact of Digital on Entertainment
Book touching the void - 1988 Failure commercially
Into thin air - 1998 best seller
Today Touching the void sells 2 is to 1 to the best seller Into thin air due to amazon.com
Indian Example
Gunda - Mithun B grade movie released in 1998 has taken off after a blogger blogged about it. A internet success story.
Statistics that indicate trends
- In 2005 search for blogs over took search for magazine Google search trends
- In 2006 the search for videos overtook the search for music
- More search happening for Video in India than in US.
- In USA search for TV Shows is more than in India.
- As internet evolves people refine their searches. Hence tv shows will increase vs video searches.
- Search for friendship is going down. In a mature economy online is a mirror of offline.
- Dating as a search term is coming down.
- 69% of Online Indians are on social netwroking sites.
Ashish Kashyap - CEO, Ibibo Web Pvt Ltd
Ashish pointed out a single reason for online videos to take off in a social networking scenario. He stated that most users create content due the following reasons
Self expression -> Self advertising -> Recognition Cycle
Self expression - To express their thoughts and belief’s
Self Advertising - To show off their skills, talent and looks
Recognition Cycle - To be recognized by peers, viewers and commentors of content
Rohit Zapak - COO, Zapak Digital Entertainment
India is not a nascent market for gaming
- Case in point: Zapak has got 6 million users - 40 gaming cafe’s
- Internationally Gaming revenues have crossed music revenues
- Gaming is divided into - Console - Online - Mobile - PC
- In terms of numbers online and mobile is showing the highest growth.
Key Online gaming markets
- China - 2.8 Billion $ by 2010
- Russia - 1 Billion $ by 2010
- Brazil - 850 million $ by 2010
India is lacking due to the broadband penetration. The day we have 50 million broadband users we would be a big gaming economy.
India’s projected Internet userbase and gaming userbase
In 2010 Indian Internet users will be 108 million and in 2012 170 million users
While during the same period online gamers would be 20 million and 40 million respectively
Key growth drivers for gaming
- Broadband
- PC penetration
- Good content
Zapak’s Vision & Future Plans
- To Capture all aspects of the gaming value chain
- 95% of our content comes from outside of India - India has zero game dev capability.
- MMO’s require high broadband and hence a shared access strategy i.e. gaming cafe’s
- We should have 300 cafe’s by 2009 and by 2 years we should have 3000 cafe’s
- 50% of online revenues come from cafe’s
- Development Retail network - payment cards - cash cards and games for kids
All in all this session was insightful especially from a statistics standpoint that were given out by the panelists
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The second session at the IAMAI Digital Entertainment Conference revolved around Entertainment from 10 feet i.e. Digital TV.
The panelists for this session were
- Vikram Kaushik - MD - Tata Sky
- Sujata Dev - CEO Time Broadband
- Preeti Desai - VP Marketing & Strategic Alliances
- Saurabh Kanwar - Vice President Content and Communication, Channel V
- Panel Moderator - Govindrj Ethiraj, Editor-in-Chief, UTVi
We are aggregating some key points made by two of the panelists.
Vikram Kaushik - MD - Tata Sky
Insights into DTH business
- DTH taken 5 years to get to 6 million subscribers
- It took tata sky has crossed 2 mllion subscribers in 20 months.
- It took mobile telephony industry as a whole 6 years to get to 3 million
- India is projected to have 165 million pay tv Households by 2015
- By 2015 there will be 90% penetration of pay tv
- DTH expected to grow 680% and DTH will be 40 million subscribers by 2015
- In the next 5 years DTH will be able to add 30 million subscribers
- DTH in India is the Volume game
- Indian cable tv subscribers are currently spending abt 1-2% of disposable income on cables services
- Anywhere in the world the cable tv spend is atleast 3-4% of disposable incomes
- This means that TV services in India are grossly underpriced
Why does DTH create congruence of interests of all users?
- DTH provides transparent auditable platforms for broadcasters
- Government - new revenue streams and tax collections
- Technology is proven the world over
Value Chain of DTH
- Reach > VAS > Professional customer services > Value
- To get to the bottom of the pyramid you have to start at the top
- Execution requires to invest in tomorrow
Sujata Dev - CEO Time Broadband
According to me Next Generation Network will facilitate single gateway for a digital home.
International trends
- People moving towards interactivity.
- Time shifted and delayed viewing.
- Disaggregated consumption.
- UGC content consumption causing longtail effect.
- Rapid transition is global trend.
Mobile migration is imperative
- Modes of consumption will drive form of consumption.
- Also this would define money spend on the content.
- Content repurposing will need to happen for different platforms
Preeti Desai of Rediff spoke on Rediff as a platform while Saurabh Kanwar of Channel V Spoke about the circle of trust among TV viewers.
On the whole the session left much to be desired as in IPTV vs DTH comparison, The possible applications over TV that could make it a different viewing experience. Also a Tivo like model in India. None of this came up for discussion during the panel which made it a let down as far as we are concerned.
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