For the month of March, over 15 million subscribers have been added in the wireless segment. In absolute terms Reliance leads the operators with a little over 3 million additions to the subscribers. This number seems more predictable as Reliance is operating on a wider map in the country and its wireless services comprise of CDMA and the GSM.

But the real surprise comes from Aircel. The operator has been predominant in the southern states of India. Its presence on the country map was limited to this region and in terms of visibility, it was not of the stature of other competitors from the private sector. However, the numbers of March published by the regulator (TRAI) reveal a different story. Among the private cellular operators, Aircel has seen the maximum growth; it added 5.73% new subscribers compared to the previous month. Although, the operator has over 18 million of the total 391 million subscribers, which is around 5% (all wireless subscribers including WLL-F) of the market, the growth rate itself is an indication of its plans. No other private operator has been able to register a growth rate exceeding 4.4%. State owned BSNL leads the overall wireless operators with 5.89% increase. But this is attributed to WLL as well.

Talking in terms of pure cellular networks, Aircel has definitely emerged as a leader by way of proportionate increase in subscribers for the month.

Perhaps this has encouraged the operator to advertise heavily as it is expanding its network in other regions (circles).

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There are many inferences one can draw after seeing the results of Nokia for this quarter. But, I could find one of them that will surely make some people happy. People who plan to buy or replace a mobile handset should wait for a while to get best out of their money.

In 2008, Q2 saw the maximum decline for ASP (Average Selling Price) of a mobile handset from Nokia. The decrease was 6.32%. For the year 2008, the A2SP (Average of Average Selling Price) for all the quarters was 3.81%. With the conditions prevalent towards the latter half of 2008, the decrease can be said as a modest one and such decrease in the ASP is something evident and explainable under normal circumstances as well.

But 2009, has not been a good year for mobile devices as well. For just one quarter, for which Nokia announced results, the decline in ASP is 8.5% valuing $85.7. Just a year ago, a Nokia handset would sell averaging $104.2. So in just four quarters the average selling price has fallen close to $20.

If the trend remains so, which is most likely to remain so, we could expect a further steeper decrease in the average selling price of mobile handsets, not only for Nokia but for other players as well. With things appearing to be remaining similar or worsening in Q2 right up to Q4, we could expect a similar rate decrease in the ASP per quarter. Considering the decrease of 8.5% in ASP per quarter, we should see the selling price of a Nokia handset averaging around $65.8, which would be decrease of one-third in the price in two years time. Surely the mobile handset manufacturers will have tough time ahead. Probably they need to rethink about the product lines they must focus on at present. It is expected there will be reduction in the rate of replacement of handsets, the key to success lies with the new markets of Asia where the basic sub $100 handset is the handset of masses. For the time being, handset manufacturers must focus on this segment till waters are calm.

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India is facing many issues that make the lives of the people insecure. People across ages, religion, race and so on. We see extortions, kidnappings, rapes, eve teasing and other similar heinous crimes happening everyday across the country. Unfortunately, teenagers and kids are the ones targeted most of the times. It is not only that grown-ups can face some emergencies. Kids and teenagers are more prone to such risks.

In a routine day, youngsters are exposed to high risk timings like commuting to school and back, attending extra tuition classes, attending activity and sports clubs, hang out with friends, etc. At these occasions parents are not usually with their wards and the criminals often take advantage of such instances and commit crimes.

Legally anybody under 18 years of age cannot enter into a contract in India; hence cannot subscribe to mobile services. So what most of the parents do (who want to be extra cautious); they subscribe to a prepaid mobile service in their name for kids to use. This way they are always in touch with them and can be around them in shortest possible time when needed.

It is not necessary to say that this is not good. With kids exposed to so many threats in India, it is important that we have a system that keeps kids connected with their parents and the emergency service providers like police, so that they are able to contact them when required. It will not only help in getting rid of the habit of some parents who get a connection in their name to be used by the kids but will also be beneficial for the law abiding parents whose kids are equally important to them but do not want to go against law.

Then there are several mobile value added services like ringtone downloads, wallpaper downloads, etc. that mainly attracts kids and if remains unchecked can consume a lot of their pocket monies which is effectively borne by parents. If the mobile services are offered under parental control as is offered by several operators, like AT&T in US, parents can easily restrict the services and budget allocations per type of service.

To initiate the process we need to set in place regulations providing for such services where the subscription for kids will remain linked with their parent’s connection. Legally a parent will be the customer. Then there has to be a bouquet of services that could be offered for kids. Essentially these could be calling restricted numbers to be managed by parents, access to emergency numbers and a few value added services as may be thought by parents. So the TRAI must initiate process of consulting service providers and other stake holders about deciding the framework of such a service.

For service providers this will mean additional revenues, early capturing of customers as these kids would grow in the full fledged customers and a service that will be a service to the citizens of the nation. The early entrant into this space can also get some extra share of the pie by seeing some switching happening of the parent’s connections. On top of it there could be some new value added services like cartoons, comics and short stories through which service providers can stream in additional revenues.

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By now everybody agrees that mobility is the future in communications. So all the futuristic solutions will have mobility component. Somehow, vendors are trying to have more of speed to have rich content applications over the wireless networks. For an end-user it will be immaterial how it gets it. They should be able to use these applications over their wireless devices.

Right now we are at a cross road. Whether to go with LTE or WiMAX? I say both will co-exist. The selection of the option will be determined by who is selecting. If it is a cellular operator, definitely they will go for LTE or at least advocate for it. On the other hand, if it is a data operator like as ISP, it will prefer WiMAX. After all, both want a wireless alternative that kind of extends their present learning curves.

Clearwire, the largest WiFi access point network owner in the world, recently set up a WiMAX innovation network at Silicon Valley to help developers build applications in real time over the network. There are three major communications companies that have supported the network – Cisco, Google and Intel. Of these Intel has been since banking upon WiMAX and developed a chip for it. Google is perhaps looking at WiMAX to develop its own broadband network to bypass the intermediaries. Equally this is attracting Cisco. Cisco has not a presence a mobile market. It has little or no solutions for GSM or other mobile networks. But it also wants to have its presence in the mobile market at wide area level. At homes, it already dominates the WiFi market with gateways and routers and modems. To expand this presence in a broader perspective, WiMAX suits it very well. In fact some of the experts in the industry believe WiFi-WiMAX convergence would be the final answer – with WiFi taking care under the roof and WiMAX being the channel outside. In that scenario, Cisco will be able to deliver end to end and supporting this initiative from Clearwire is definitely a step in this direction.

It will be interesting to see, whether WiMAX dominates or the LTE. I will not say who will win. Both will coexist. But we need to check whether mobility will have the lead or enabling data. For sure, we will see other traditionally data vendors polarising towards the WiMAX and it should be like that. Makes sense!

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As per the impressive results for the quarterly (December 2008 – February 2009), the company earned a revenue of $3.46 billion and shipped 7.8 million handsets. Of these 7.3 million handsets were activated during the period. The average selling price for a handset was $370 and revenue from handset sale constituted 83% of the quarterly revenue.

Other segments fetching revenue for the quarter were service ($415 million), software ($59 million) and other revenues ($106 million) that constitutes repairing and servicing of non-warranty products.

The growth of blackberry is across the globe. It is not specified to a particular region or country. This quarter the non North America subscriber base reached one third of the total and countries across Europe, Asia and Middle East showed growth in sales. A lot of operators announced availability of Blackberry services/handsets during the quarter and some of the carriers launched aggressive sale plans. The company in its latest release attributed these offers for its unexpected growth in the quarter.

Blackberry is a strategically positioned handset. It has made its presence in the enterprise domain. Today, half of its customers are in enterprise segment and the remaining are from non-enterprise domain, most of whom must still be in the enterprises. So to push or launch a service in the enterprise domain, Blackberry is definitely the best handheld wireless device. The service will see lot of users and it will be a value addition for Blackberry.

Fixed Mobile Convergence, which essentially must have an IP leg (not the Internet connectivity through GPRS, 3G or data calls, etc.) is primarily attracting the enterprises. Even some studies done on the subject show that more than 70% of the subscribers are from enterprises. In an enterprise environment a WiFi cloud can be used to beam IP over these devices when the user within premises and while on the road the handset uses cellular networks like the GSM or CDMA. Unfortunately, FMC has not taken up in the way it was presumed earlier. There are many reasons, primary to me is that cellular operators are not pursuing this technology as it gives traditionally data service providers an access in to talk business. FMC somehow, brings data operators in direct competition with the cellular operators. Cellular operators on the other hand prefer to push LTE as it is an extension to their networks and technologies for which they need not to acquire capabilities from a different domain.

Whatever the case, if Fixed Mobile Convergence providers have to really make it an impressive service with handsome figures of users and revenues, it must seriously look at Blackberry devices that have their established place within the enterprise domain. Addition of the capability also gels well with the philosophy of Blackberry and it will definitely be a value addition for the existing users. RIM could also make some more money by offering Instant Messaging and VoIP client in their handsets and enable VoIP calls from these devices.

Although, presently even if you subscribe to 3G data services or have a high-end mobile that has WiFi connectivity, one can probably enjoy all the features that Blackberry is offering. The underlying technology may be different but that hardly matter for the end users. Blackberry has undoubtedly made a market of its own which seems to be unshakable in recent times to come. Happy Blackberrying!

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iPhone gave the mobile industry the ‘touch’ experience that could never make a remarkable entry in to the industry before. Although there were some handsets – particularly PDAs that offered touch screen interface, they never became so popular that people really got crazy after them. In the grey market, where iPhone was not introduced officially people paid every around $100 for cracking the lock to use this device over unauthorized networks.

Operators also tried striking deals with Apple to offer iPhone to their subscribers. Still, there are operators trying to get iPhone over their networks.

After the introduction of iPhone, nobody can deny that other vendors of mobile handsets rather communication handsets, started realizing the need for touch features in handsets to ensure their presence in this market and be able to draw their pie.

After Apple, HTC, Samsung, LG, Sony Ericsson and now Nokia all have shown their touch enabled handsets and except for Nokia’s N97 all are available in the market. Nokia is making this available by the end of first half of 2009. Surely, the sales will be affected due to the overall decrease in the expected revenues in the mobile market, but the touch functionality is going to give help the mobile vendors to keep up their revenue levels.

This touch experience is also extending in to the PC market as Windows 7 (Microsoft’s new baby) has the touch screen capabilities. So in 2010 we can expect this trend intruding in the PC and Laptop markets.

With all these contributions that Apple did by introducing iPhone, it is missing the point somehow. Comparing the options now available in the market, iPhone lacks lot many features that have now become inherent to mobile handsets. For reference, it misses the WiFi connectivity and a high resolution camera. Until 2007, there was still a clear distinction between a business and multimedia phone. But since 2008, we are seeing multimedia making an entry in to the business space as well. Even multimedia phones are capable of holding all those applications that are required in a business scenario and on top of it, they have the multimedia applications too.

Apple must definitely look at the surroundings and launch another version for its iPhone that will compete with the competitors’ offerings. Otherwise, it is definitely going to score low on the preference scale of users.

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With wireless element increasing its presence into our communications scenario we prefer and demand more from wireless. Our home networks, PANs, LANs, etc. have become wireless and we are enjoying the comfort and ease they provide.

Users are getting accustomed to an all wireless network which they could use, be it at home or on the move. But so far, most of the service providers are working on a complex convergence model; merging two different technologies – for instance, IP-cellular, PSTN-cellular, etc. This is not an easy task as it appears. Managing two different technologies with completely different architectures, protocols and objectives is not only complex, but costly as well.

The end user also finds it complex to understand the fundamentals of such merging technologies and doubts its performance. From service provider’s perspective, issues like handoff, call continuity and billing have always been a concern. Though, by now, the availability of handsets is not a major concern as all leading cellular handset manufacturers like Nokia, Samsung and Sony Ericsson are providing WiFi enabled handsets.

In-house, I think we have got a stable and reliable technology in the form of WiFi. It can handle data, voice and video in an efficient manner allowing us to use IP for all our communication needs. On the other side, outside, on the road, we are still experimenting with various things. We are mainly looking at cellular networks in the form of 3G and 4G networks which I think is not a lasting solution. We must not focus at providing a service; our aim must be to find out technologies that are enabling these services and try to bank upon such a technology that will give us seamless bondage between the communication inside and outside.
The convergence, which I feel will be beneficial for all – users, service providers, vendors and the regulators is merging WiFi and WiMAX. Both are based on similar rationale with WiMAX capable of serving longer ranges. Yes, there were concerns about continuity in WiMAX, but mobile WiMAX has made that a history. By using this model, we are looking at the same technology – IP and it will be very easy to integrate the two. Technically, it might result in improved quality as well. Our carrier of data, voice or video content will be IP and it will be only the difference in approach while we are accessing it in-house and outside.

WiMAX has a great potential as architecture. It will bring in great economies for the service providers as the cost of laying the infrastructure will be less due to fewer cells and the operational cost will be less compared to any network that requires many cells. WiMAX can also lead us to making Internet look like terrestrial TV technology and it could really become a plug-in technology. Later we could get rid of WiFi also and have something similar to pico and femtocells for improving in-house coverage over WiMAX only. This is what I refer to as IPoW or IP over Wireless. So, if this convergence has all these apparent benefits, you could ask me why not much is happening on this front. There will be only one answer to this question from my side, i.e. it is all because of power politics. The communications market is still dominated by the telecom operators and they are pushing technologies that evolve from telecom domain. Once ISPs have a significant role and say, we can see these technologies coming to the forefront. Perhaps, the present recessionary conditions might lead to the prominent emergence of these technologies which still are looked upon as disruptive.

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