Mobile is Global and Complex

Folks

This post is long overdue and delayed. Part of this delay is change and part of it is new learning. This week I will try and share with you all some of my observation on changes and viewpoints of clients and impact that pertains to our products sets and general area --- Application Middleware!

Let me Start with the hottest topic – Mobility

Mobility – It is global and complex – I was fortunate to travel to India and shadow a mobile executive and learn about what Mobility means in Asian context. As a part of learning I met a few clients and went to rural India as a part of market “test”. The experience was amazing, it is remarkable to see the commerce ecosystem that is dominated by SMS bases application/messages, and this is reaching remote parts of the country. The people see it as way to avoid long lines and yet obtain services by paying an intermediary for utilities, internet services, prepaid services etc. The many rural areas – which is about 80% of India, this mechanism is still effective where power or even hi-end infrastructure is still developing.

Also besides the technology there are other socio-Economic-political factors that play in positioning the solution we sell. For instance issues like network bandwidth, local regulations, and availability of frequencies to offer services which has a broader impact on solutions we propose. Again I met a few governmental entities that govern the network infrastructure in India and took time to have a deeper understanding of why the landscape of mobile application differs in wide usage. For instance the Data plans due to network availability is restricted, cost of smart phones is often ONLY afforded by the working professionals or elites, inexpensive feature phones becomes the norm due to cost, size, power availability and general acceptance by the population.

Inference: The Governments, the local conglomerates like Bharati-Airtel, BSNL etc include the discussion around the call volume and SMS volume in network planning. I imagine as data plans and network availability ramps up, these discussions will change in terms of how the service providers design their networks and that will lead to new ecosystem of service delivery.

thoughts?

:)

Nitin