So I spent three sweltering days in Mubai last month speaking with trutap users about their likes and dislikes and generally getting to grips with the Indian mobile scene.With a further 8 million subscribers going mobile in India last month, the local operators are falling over each other to reach out for more customers. 'My Mobile' - a remarkably comprehensive and useful magazine for anyone interested in what Indians think about mobile - featured a threepage article about how the rural population - three quarters of a billion people - is the next target.
There are more operators in India than the UK, so competition for new customers is fierce. Flat rate data charges of R350 to R450 per month are common - opening up daily internet usage to a huge swathe of low salaried people. One guy I met spent up to 6 hours a day chatting to friends on IM on his mobile - something I heard time and time again during my trip.
Indian operators are doing all they can to differentiate themselves - including promoting services that haven't really hit the mainstream in Europe. Location-based services remain the holy grail of mobile, but specialist GPS phones and applications, none have really caught the imagination. Indian operators are pitching straight into this market as reasons to go with them - see this ad I spotted in central Mumbai...
If you want to see the Indian mobile revolution in full swing, take a trip on a train. In one carriage I went in, of the 200 or so guys (women have a separate carriage) squeezed together into a sweaty commuting pulp, at least 50 of us were thumbing our phones, texting, talking or going online. GPRS connections are't all that, even in the city, but when there's nothing else to do bar savour the smell of armits around you, each mobile has a truly captive audience.
Nokia look to have cleared up in India, but Chinese knock-offs are also everywhere (see above). I looked high and low for the $20 People's Phone from Spice, but it seems to have a low profile in the city. I suspect it may be a hit in the countryside gold-rush though.
My final analysis of mobile in India? There's a huge appetite for mobile services and applications - mobile Internet is already beyond anything we've see in the UK. That said, most Indian consumers aren't demanding frills and spills, they just want to be connected to their friends at a price they can afford. Come to think of it, that's all people in the UK want too! Which idiot decided we should get mobile widgets, GPS and accelerometers but not flat rate data?
