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RIM Launches Mobile App World For Blackberry - Other Phone Makers To Follow?

Research In Motion, the makers of blackberry mobile phone has launched Mobile App World, a new mobile app storefront for BlackBerry. The app store expects 1000 applications in the first week which would give it a leeway against apple’s app success.

Many emulated versions of iphone apps would find their way to Mobile app world and thus provide an additional platform for app developers to expand in a big way.

To browse Mobile App World, BlackBerry users first need to download the App World app.

This move follows the recent announcement of Microsoft entering the app market for its mobile flagship product-windows mobile. They would even have a return back policy for any paid app within a day.

There are many other phone makers in the waiting to launch their own app store either fully owned by them or in partnership with others as Nokia would be launching its OVI store soon and Android is already in the market with some 2300 apps.

What really makes apps -an attractive proposition?

The Volume game - Apple’s iPhone App Store has registered more than 800 million downloads and boasts just 25,000 apps. They even get 30% commission on paid offerings which in turn is significant amount looking at no effort being put by them.

More sales: App offering attracts more attention of users and in turn positively affects the sales of mobile phone.

Media gimmicks - App store also helps companies to get continuous media attention through the app launches and successes.

No development cost - The companies saves money and time which they otherwise might have to spend on developing inhouse application for mobile phone users.

Naukri, Jeevansaathi, Sulekha, Financial Express & Makemytrip Go Mobile Via Spicetele’s Mobisoc Mitr

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Internet Report Pegs India at No.115 For Internet Speed

Akamai has released its 4th State of the internet report in which is states the following findings:

India ranked #20 globally for number of unique IP addresses seen by Akamai, with 2.63 million IP's

o Up 42.91% year-over-year, and 1.69% from Q3 2008
o In comparison, United States was ranked #1 with 114.1 million unique IPs

India's average connection speed was at 772 Kbps and ranked #115 in terms of average connection speed

o Globally, the average connection speed was approximately 1.5 Mbps
o The United States ranked #17 globally, with an average connection speed of 3.9 Mbps while South Korea ranked #1 with an average connection speed of 15 Mbps

India ranked #17 globally in terms of attack traffic, with 1.16% of observed attack traffic. In comparison, United States was ranked #1 with 22.85% of observed attack traffic
India ranked #148 globally for number of unique IP addresses per capita, with 0.0023
India ranked #62 globally for high broadband adoption, with 0.56% of connections to Akamai at speeds over 5 Mbps
India ranked #81 globally for high broadband penetration, with fewer than 0.0001 high broadband IPs per capita in Q4 2008
India ranked #93 globally for broadband adoption, with 3.74% of connections to Akamai at speeds over 2 Mbps
India ranked #118 globally for broadband penetration, with 0.0001broadband IPs per capita in Q4 2008
India ranked #55 globally for narrowband adoption, with 25.8% of connections to Akamai at speeds below 256 Kbps

The most interesting of the above was the internet speeds in which India ranks 115 over the world.

Internet speeds is key to the following:

1) Great browsing experience i.e. load times and script execution times.

2) Video, audio and gaming which all involve high bandwidth and speed usage.

The above two aspects directly affect revenues as well as online advertising remain nascent due to lack of usage of rich media ads and their delivery being a question mark due to slow speeds.

While India is making progress with the speeds with high speed data cards penetrating the market the fair usage policies of companies are making internet surfing more costly by placing a cap on the monthly bandwidth usage. I believe TRAI and the authorities need to work with the ISPs and data service providers to make sure that India’s ranking can improve in the years to come.

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Admagnet To Handle Ad Sales For People Interactive

People Interactive the company behind internet brands such as Shaadi.com, Makaan.com, Fropper.com, Astrolife.com and Shaaditimes.com has decided to outsource its ad sales management to DGTL Media the parent company of the ad network admagnet.

Shaadi.com is one of the top 1000 sites in the world as per alexa and it also gets a good amount of US centric visitors as per quantcast. Even though the numbers of page views and visitors are quite high classified models like shaadi.com and makaan.com haven’t really been able to scale up their ad revenues. Most of their revenues come from subscription sales. This move clearly indicates a need to outsource non core functions to a specialist which in this case is Admagnet.

So all ad sales for People Interactive will now be handled by DGTL Media. This also means that Admagnet the ad network would have inventory of over 200 million impressions a month at its disposal. This also includes up market NRI’s.

The question that remains is the value of ads on a matrimony or property site vis a vis a content site like rediff.com. I mean is there a way to pit one against the other? Common sense would suggest that people looking for brides or grooms are less likely to click on ads unless its an ad about a wedding ring! Whats your take?

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Google’s New Strategy For India

Back in 2006, Google's chief Eric Schmidt told in an interview to TOI that India will emerge as the world’s largest internet market in the world. This statement was based on a few facts and figures that Google had analysed and it has come out to be true.

It does make business sense to change your strategy for a specific market that has the capability to offer you the maximum profits. So, Google has changed its offerings for India and will now come up with a mix of online, offline and mobile offerings. If we study about the tweak in strategy in detail, we would understand that this is a very well thought move.

With strict adherence to its mission statement, which is “to organise the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful”; Google has divided the target market it caters to in three broad classifications viz. individual users, advertisers and enterprises. Search remains their USP in India and they obviously are the numero uno in India for the same too.

Social Media has emerged and Google’s 95 percent revenues come from advertising and thus the ads on Orkut deserves a special mention. Google India Managing Director Shailesh Rao says, “Google is now strengthening its focus on Tier II and III cities as part of its mission to target emerging users. This underscores its online strategy“. But, the scope of a mobile strategy is well advocated when Google India Country Head (products) Vinay Goel says, “There are around 55.5 million Internet users (2008 figures), as compared to 376 million mobile subscribers. It's a no-brainer that this disparity will only widen in the days to come“.

Google has thus enabled search on mobile phones with an IVR facility and focused on advertising for the regional players to become national by offering services such as search engine marketing, brand advertising and offering offline help to ad agencies. This will be done by the usage of two main services Google Adwords and Adsense. Google has also ventured into the entertainment business with absolute supremacy and has struck up lucrative deals with UTV, Rajshri Productions etc. for its very own Youtube. Making Google Apps available via resellers and it’s success with Android is bound to be successful in India.

For sure, the online advertising revenue have grown slowly (refer my two last posts), but its hunger to throw up innovative strategies like The Mouse Over Rate and others, will surely help the company achieve what they want. The launches of 3G, Wimax, rural internet users, wider reach of broadband services etc. will only help Google achieve the profits that it has targeted with its new strategy.

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