Plunging indices. Huge quarterly losses. Massive job cuts. Since October last year, there’s been barely any good news in the business dailies. One exception stands out: telecom companies in India have steadily kept on adding mobile subscribers. In February 2009, India added another 13.44 million mobile subscribers to its existing 362.30 million, making the telecom growth story continue despite the overall economic slowdown.
The case for Mobile VAS
However, even as the number of subscribers has gone up, with increased competition and expansion in non-urban areas, call rates have declined. Hence the average revenue per user (ARPU) has gone down, squeezing the margins of telecom companies. Operators are thus looking to increase revenues by offering mobile value-added services (MVAS) to existing customers. Says Girish Trivedi, deputy director, information, communication and technology practice, Frost & Sullivan, South Asia and Middle East, "Service providers are going to focus on an application-led ecosystem to get a bigger wallet share of the customer. Creating, selling and bundling applications based on usability and user experience will be the key growth area."
Definition. MVAS is any service provided by your mobile phone operator, over and above core voice calls and is charged for separately. ‘The MVAS In India’, a report by the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) and the eTechnology Group at IMRB, a market research firm, identifies three distinct areas in MVAS. The first is entertainmentVAS, which includes jokes, games and movie clips. The second major component is infoVAS, which covers news and weather updates, while the third category is mCommerceVAS (mobile banking and payment).
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