virgin-mobile

Essar Seeking For New Foreign Partner To Grow Their Mobile Retail Arm

by Paul Joseph August 3, 2011 Featured

The Essar Group has plans to pump its mobile retail brand : The Mobile Store with a new foreign partner soon. In 2007, Essar had entered a tie up with Richard Branson’s Virgin Mobile to open The Mobile Store outlets across India, Selling cell phones and its accessories. On 30th April this year, the agreement came to an end and was not renewed. The Mobile Store, which is said to have a 50% market share in organized mobile phone retail in India, cover over 200 towns and have 900 stores. Alok Gupta, CEO of Essar Retail, the oil, steel and mobile retail hand of Essar said, “ We are keen to offer equity participation in The Mobile Store to a foreign company which can bring -n best practices to improve efficiency. In a low-margin and high-volume business (like mobile phone retailing), it is all about unlocking value through efficiency .” As mobile phones have a very short shelf-span, it further hinted that they were looking for a foreign partner who possess process-related intellectual property to help further improve their inventory management. While India is world’s 2nd largest market for mobile phones , vast majority of sales are of only low-cost phones with basic functions. Hence margins in this segment aren’t too high, furthering the need for good inventory management. Executive Director of one of leading consulting firm KPMG, Ramesh Srinivas agreed by saying that Indian retailers may have gone wrong in certain aspects in the past and must learn from their overseas counterparts. “ Some of these areas are getting the right format, location, and supply chain management. One of the benefits may lie in gaining leverage by buying in a larger bulk after joining hands and consolidating the procurement needs of the two partners ,” Srinivas added. Considering all the facts. it’s safe to say that Essar Retail has ambitious plans for the future which includes an aggressive 20% YoY Growth target by the end of the current Fiscal Year. Their growth will be mainly by driving the existing ecosystem of entrepreneurs. So as a consumer what do you expect? It would be safe to assume that we will see less wastage on extravagant displays so as to reduce the expenses. How do you think The Mobile Store will change over the coming months? Share your thoughts with us.

Tagged as: director, events, Indian, international, news, technology, their-mobile, virgin-mobile

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Virgin Group to Exit from Virgin Mobile India

by Paul Joseph April 14, 2011 Featured

Richard Branson-promoted Virgin Group has decided to exit from the joint venture with Tata Teleservices, Virgin Mobile India, reported The Hindu Business Line . Virgin Mobile India is a mobile virtual network operator , which uses spectrum of Tata Tele. Virgin Mobile had launched its CDMA services in March 2008 and GSM services in January last year when Tata Tele got licenses for GSM services. It offers CDMA services in all 22 circles, while GSM services in 18 circles. Virgin Mobile India is a 50:50 joint venture between Tata Tele and Virgin Group . But, now Tata Tele has agreed to buy the 50% stake of Virgin Group. The move was expected considering that Tata Tele was integrating all its telecom-specific businesses under one umbrella. This will enable the company to merge its sales, marketing and distribution teams and achieve cost synergies by reducing redundancies, the report states. But, Tata Tele will continue to use the Virgin brand name as per the contract. It will pay the royalties to the Virgin Group for the same for the next three years. Tata Tele has its own brands Tata Indicom for CDMA services and Tata Docomo, a joint venture with Japanese major NTT DoCoMo for GSM services. NTT DoCoMo has 26% stake in Tata DoCoMo. It was reported that Virgin Mobile mainly focuses on youth segment. The schemes like consumers receiving 10 paise for incoming calls were considered innovative. But, it could not sustain the momentum later on and has fallen back. Showcase Your Digital Work Here! Win An Award! Log onto WATAwards Related Posts Airtel Has Highest Number Of Active Subscribers, What About The Rest? Airtel And SBI Announce Joint Venture To Serve The Unbanked 3G Rollout Will See Telcos Working Together To Maximize Coverage Mobile Number Portability’s Data Churn And How Telcos Will Implement It! Acer And Tata Teleservices Launch Netbook With Pre-Embedded Tata Photon Plus

Tagged as: announce-joint, digital, japanese, photon-plus, telcos, tie ups, virgin, virgin-group, virgin-mobile

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BSNL App Store Coming Soon?

by Paul Joseph February 9, 2011 Featured

Appvolution rolls on! We just wrote about an Android App Store specifically for India.Well, BSNL is the fray as well. It had signed an agreement with Accenture to build an app store for its 2G and 3G subscribers. It seems to be 8-12 months too late to the party. But to be fair to them this was  expected back in August. No word on what caused the delay for now. BSNL certainly seem to be in the news lately, with the iPad launch and iPhone4  rumour . But all is not rosy, with early figures from MNP suggesting that a significant number of their customers are unhappy. How much will/can an app store change that? The store is expected to have around 3400 apps in the paid and free categories. About 80% of the apps will be paid and 20% will be free…Wait! 80% paid? If this is true, they’d better get their pricing points right. Aircel was the first telecom company in India to build an app store along with Infosys. This was followed by Airtel. Reliance and Virgin tied up with GetJar . Idea and Vodafone too have their respective app stores. In related news, Accenture is believed to be testing its own internal app store for employees. Marking a shift in the approach to enterprise apps. Employees have begun to expect comparable levels of user experience from enterprise applications and consumer applications. No matter how long the tail is, the consumer app store space seems to be getting very saturated – enterprise is something that still remains unexploited to a large extent. Do you think BSNL’s app store will be successful? Let us know! REGISTER FOR WATSUMMIT – INDIA’S FLAGSHIP SUMMIT ON DIGITAL MEDIA REGISTER NOW! Related Posts Discovery And Apalya Partner To Launch 5 Mobile TV Channels Airtel 3G Is Here, DoCoMo Expands Footprint..Where Is Vodafone?(Updated) 3G Rollout Will See Telcos Working Together To Maximize Coverage GSM Shows A Marginal Dip In August Subscriptions MNP : Over 11 Lakh Opt For Change, But How Many Will Get It?

Tagged as: aircel, apple, features, media, mobile, news, reliance, virgin-mobile, vodafone

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Reliance Announces Pan-India SMS based Mobile Conferencing

by Paul Joseph October 26, 2010 Featured

Reliance Communications has just announced India’s First Handset Independent SMS-based Mobile conferencing service. The voice conferencing service is being offered as an extension to its existing conferencing product, Group Talk . The new service will enable Reliance Mobile customers to establish a conference call amongst a group of 9 contacts with a single SMS. The group-oriented service will be made available to all Reliance Mobile GSM and CDMA subscribers using any handset through the ‘SMS based Mobile Conferencing’ solution from US based Kodiak Networks. According to Mr. Anil Pande, Head – VAS, Reliance Communications , “ Our Mobile Conferencing service is a cost-effective, efficient and convenient solution that enhances productivity of small, medium enterprise customers. Introducing the service now on SMS – the preferred mode of communication for youth and young executives today, will lead to popularization of conferencing. ” The earlier iteration of Group Talk was designed to work on handsets with Java, Qualcomm’s Brew running Symbian or BlackBerry OS through an app downloadable from RWorld. The SMS based variant is likely to increase the prospective user base – both in terms of availability and ease of use. Subscription to the service costs Rs.40/month. Groups can be created via a text message and calls can be initiated in the future through either the Dial-in (postpaid and prepaid) or Dial-out (postpaid only) mode. Reliance subscribers interested in this feature can find out more about it here Attend Workshop On Social Media For Brands (Delhi & Mumbai) REGISTER HERE Related Posts Nokia C6 to debut in September – The Wait Continues Download Unlimited Music For Free On Your Mobile – Virgin Mobile Targets Youth Again Some Telcos Favour Delinking While Some Oppose – To Link, Or Not To Link? October Telecom Stats: Subscriber Base At 52.56 Crores, Telecom Density Reaches 44.87 Percent Telecom Sector Analysis for June Quarter – Severe Decline In ARPU, MOU But Growth Continues

Tagged as: attend-workshop, black, india, reliance-communications, sms, social, telecom, virgin-mobile

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Olive And Airtel Offer Hybrid Phone at Rs 1299!

by Paul Joseph September 7, 2010 Featured

Next time when your mobile phone flashes the “Battery Low” message, you might not go through a wave of irritated emotions. Olive Telecom has rolled out India’s first hybrid powered mobile phone with a free Airtel connection! In addition to the regular LiOn battery, the phone can be powered by a sleek AAA battery as well. This will come as a huge sigh of relief to people who regularly find their phones low on battery with no place or time to charge them. The mobile phone, christened “Olive FrvrOn”, boasts of quite a few features for its rather modest Rs 1299 price tag. A 1.5” colour display, polyphonic ringtones, stereo headset, built-in FM radio and a speaker phone deck it up nicely to generate sufficient appeal. The tie-up, in my opinion, has a neat understanding of the core market up for grabs. The Indian mobile phone market is seeing increased share of new handset manufacturers and this stems from the offering of good features at insanely attractive prices. According to the Voice&Data 100 Indian Telecom Survey, Nokia’s share came down to 52.2% from 64% last year and homegrown handset manufacturers like Spice, Micromax and Karbonn upped their share from 3-4% last year to 14% now. Olive’s phone will be able to exploit this trend sufficiently and the hybrid power will set it considerably apart from other mobile phones in this segment where Airtel has smartly moved to cash in on this event it foresees. Market penetration is written large all over this. Olive Telecom and Airtel have started a marketing campaign in rural areas with 19 vans stationed in Kolkata, Cooch Behar and Behrampur. Promoters on board demonstrate the device and purchases made will be accompanied with a battery powered LED lantern as a free gift. Retailers are also being offered chargers and re-chargeable batteries to loan it to customers. “After its successful debut and huge customer response for Olive frvrOn we have partnered with Airtel, country’s largest mobile phone operator offering a free Airtel connection with the handset at a consumer friendly price. The Airtel offer will be available in the West Bengal region. We, now, have a chance to take it to areas where the quality of electricity is not always very good. In effect we will take it to markets that the phone was intrinsically designed for,” explained Arun Khanna, Chairman Olive Telecommunication. Looking for a Social Media Agency? Try WATConsult – India’s Leading Social Media Agency Related Posts After Tata DoCoMo, RComm Provides Nokia Ovi Life Tools In Rural India Nokia C1 and Nokia C2 Dual-Sim Phones Launched – Last Ditch Effort? After RCom, Virgin Mobile India Ties Up With GetJar – Appvolution Mobile Banking – Will It Be Ever Be Bigger Than E-banking? Indian Handset Manufacturers Go International

Tagged as: airtel, banking, chairman, nokia, phone, tools, virgin-mobile, voice

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Comverse Lets You Monitor Mobile Bills – Avoid ‘Bill Shock’

by Paul Joseph September 3, 2010 Featured

Has it ever happened to you that one month you are happy with your phone bill and the next month you are shocked to the core looking at the same because it has skyrocketed? That expression of yours when you look at the bill in the second month, that priceless expression is called ‘ Bill Shock ‘ by the telecommunication industry. What follows is a blame game where you blame the service provider for excess charges, while the service provider blatantly denies all charges. So who is to blame for this hike in the bill? In all honesty, it is us, the customers, who are the culprits. Most of us understand the calling rates of our plans inside out. However, when it comes to data charges, not many know the charges once you exceed the limit or international roaming charges with respect to data transfer. So what is the solution? Comverse – the solution Comverse’s Billing and Active Customer Management allows service providers to actively track a customers bill. Any discrepancies can be immediately be informed to the customer so that they understand and cut down their usage accordingly. It also helps service providers to inform customers about simple tools to control and scrutinize their mobile spend. Advantage for service providers This tool will help service providers maintain their reputation in the industry. Due to ‘Bill Shocks’, customers not only express their annoyance to the service providers, but also on public forums which will inadvertently deter the services provider’s potential customer base. Some times, due to ‘Bill Shocks’, service providers have to impose limits on errant customers which again will cause customer dissatisfaction. What is your take on this tool by Comverse? Looking for a Social Media Agency? Try WATConsult – India’s Leading Social Media Agency Related Posts Bharti Airtel Stops Bulk SMS Business – Other Service Providers To Follow? WorldSIM Debuts In India With Free International Roaming BCG Reports 237 Million Internet Users In India By 2015 – Possible? Bharti Airtel’s Zain Loses Subscribers – Videocon May Sell 26% of Telecom Arm After RCom, Virgin Mobile India Ties Up With GetJar – Appvolution

Tagged as: customer, industry, sms, social, virgin-mobile

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Nokia C1 and Nokia C2 Dual-Sim Phones Launched – Last Ditch Effort?

by Paul Joseph August 31, 2010 Featured

Recently, we reported how customers tend to hang on to multiple SIM card s due to various reasons ranging from lifetime validity of the card, to good deals on messages or calls. With increasing customers having more than one SIM card, it was important for mobile phone manufacturers to introduce dual-sim phones. Many Indian manufacturers came out with such models, but one of the companies to lead the race is Micromax. According to a recent report , Micromax has made a foothold in the mobile market, and its customer base continues to grow at the expense of Nokia. Nokia has also been losing out in the smartphones market thanks to the likes of iPhone, BlackBerry, and Android. In an effort to recapture the Indian market, Nokia have launched the Nokia C1-00 and the Nokia C2-00 which have dual-sim capabilities. Features The C1 and the C2 boast of similar features like Dual-Sim , Music , and Messaging . However, the C2 does have some extra features like Camera and Internet Capability . The C1 also has a standby battery life of six weeks which is the longest ever for a Nokia mobile. Users can also switch between both SIMs by simply holding down a key in both phones. The C1 is available for INR 1,999 while you can get the C2 for about INR, 2600. A Little Too Late? All of us have been expecting a dual-sim Nokia mobile since quite some time now. Right since Micromax and other competitors came into the market with dual-sim phones, and phones with capabilities similar to a Nokia, ay a much lower price. Nokia have reacted finally, but is it a bit too late? According to us, though the launch of the C1 and C2 have come much later than expected, Nokia should be able to get back some of its lost market. After all, Nokia have established themselves in the mobile market for some time now and with such new phones which provide every capability of a Micromax or a Spice, at a price that is as much as the aforementioned brands if not lower, and combining all this with Nokia’s value for money image since a long time should be able to get back some of the lost market. Do you think Nokia will taste success if they continue to launch similar phones? Or should they concentrate on the niche smartphone market? Looking for a Social Media Agency? Try WATConsult – India’s Leading Social Media Agency Related Posts Are Smartphones The Future of Mobile? Smartphone Malwares Increase – iPhone, BlackBerry, Android Targeted After RCom, Virgin Mobile India Ties Up With GetJar – Appvolution Nokia Profit Goes Down: Look For A Revival Google Looking At India, China For Android Growth

Tagged as: black, blackberry, china, companies, media, micromax, nokia, smartphones, virgin-mobile

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After RCom, Virgin Mobile India Ties Up With GetJar – Appvolution

by Paul Joseph August 20, 2010 Featured

Virgin Mobile India has introduced many youth centric campaigns, with the most recent one being the ability for Virgin Mobile users to download free music thanks to its tie-up with Universal Music . Now, the company is at it again by tying up with GetJar , a cross platform mobile application store. The GetJar website says – GetJar – Appsolutely everything for Nokia, Blackberry, Android, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, LG, Palm – which pretty much sums up what the company is about. With this tie-up, Virgin Mobile India users will easily be able to download applications such as Facebook Mobile, Yahoo!, Nimbus, eBuddy, to name a few, across various platforms. However, Virgin are not the first mobile service providers to tie-up with GetJar. RCom had earlier in the year tied up with GetJar to bring 65,000 GetJar apps to RCom subscribers across the country. With both these tie-ups, one conclusion that can be derived is that GetJar understand the huge potential for mobile applications in India and want to penetrate this market as much as possible, in the quickest possible. Currently, Airtel holds the distinction of having the largest app store in India , names App Central, with over 13 million downloads over 4 months with a staggering rate of 1.2 downloads/sec. These new tie-ups by RCom and Virgin Mobile is sure to give Airtel a good run for their money. Recently, Rajiv Dingra, Chief Editor of WATBlog had written a post on the Business Standard on Appvolution . The article talks about how along with the mobile revolution, the application revolution has taken over India. With so many applications to choose from, it is for the consumer to decide what he wants to while away his time on. Appvolution is here whether you are ready for it or not. Do you agree? Related Posts WWW: WAT Weekly WrapUp 8th August – 15th August 2010 WWW: WAT Weekly WrapUp 1st August– 8th August 2010 Download Unlimited Music For Free On Your Mobile – Virgin Mobile Targets Youth Again Universal Music Comes To Your Mobile Through RCom Telecom Roundup: RCom – GetJar, Bharti WorldSim & Uninor Prepaid GPRS Looking for a Social Media Agency? Try WATConsult – India’s Leading Social Media Agency

Tagged as: consumer, india, media, mobile, music, universal-music, virgin-mobile

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Tata DoCoMo Introduces Pay Per Site – Sticks to Disruptive Marketing

by Paul Joseph August 10, 2010 Featured

The GSM brand of Tata Teleservices Limited, Tata DoCoMo are known for their disruptive marketing strategies. Pay Per Second calling plans made other service provides make drastic changes in their plans for customers. Then, DoCoMo came up with free access to major social networking sites through Buddynet, and recently, the service provider came up with free voice calling in Andhra Pradesh. You would have imagined that DoCoMo have done enough to drive competitors over the edge but they have come up with yet another amazing plan in the “Pay Per Site” service. The Pay Per Site plan allows users to pay INR 10 per website whereas those who are interested in multiple websites can take a combo pack wherein they only have to pay INR 25 per month. DoCoMo is also enabling customers to use the most popular categories online, i.e. Social Networking and Emailing / Instant Messaging , by offering bundled packages for the same. Each site under this genre is priced at Rs. 10/- bundled with 200 MB free data usage valid for 30 days, post which customers will be charged at 1p/kb. There are also 2 combo options in SNS Combo Pack and Emailing Combo Pack and each Combo Pack is priced at Rs. 25/- bundled with 500 MB free data usage post which the customers will be charged 1p/kb. As usual, Tata DoCoMo has come up with innovative plans which will be great for users. But as usual, I have to question their quality of service. Having a DoCoMo connection myself, which I use as a spare, I am far from satisfied with their service. From having no network to a large number of calls lost, DoCoMo has given me everything. As excited as I am to write about this new plan by DoCoMo, the excitement is not enough for a user like me to make DoCoMo my primary number. What is your take on this? Related Posts Tata DoCoMo Users Will Now Have Nokia Ovi Life Tools Nokia To Give Away Phones For Free In 5 Villages Tata Docomo Brings Manga to Indian Mobiles Download Unlimited Music For Free On Your Mobile – Virgin Mobile Targets Youth Again Universal Music Comes To Your Mobile Through RCom Looking for a Social Media Agency? Try WATConsult – India’s Leading Social Media Agency

Tagged as: india, networking, news, social-networking, tools, virgin-mobile

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Download Unlimited Music For Free On Your Mobile – Virgin Mobile Targets Youth Again

by Paul Joseph August 5, 2010 Featured

Virgin Mobile, who claim to be the only “youth centric” mobile service brand in the country, have launched yet another incentive to grab the youth of India by announcing unlimited and free music downloads to your mobile; an initiative called “ Music Unlimited “. Virgin had earlier tied up with around 50 brands that are youth centric to increase their penetration into the Indian youth market.  This new move seems certain to be a winner considering the affinity of the younger generation to listen to music on their phones. The music industry is booming via mobile phones and the real winner seems to be the service providers. I have mentioned time and again how Airtel is the leading music company in India thanks to music downloads on phones. The revenue is higher in rural areas as compared to metros and urban areas as the only way to access music in rural areas is mobiles. As a result, many service providers are trying to cash in on this music via mobile craze. RCom tied up with Universal Music to make Universal’s music available to their subscribers, and now Virgin has jumped on the bandwagon. This service by Virgin allows users, Virgin Mobile’s GSM and CDMA customers, to choose from a library of about 1.5 lakh songs which spreads across various genres like Pop, Bhangra etc. to songs from latest Bollywood movies. Where Virgin will really edge out competition seems to be the availability of songs in regional languages like Tamil, Bengali, Malayalam amongst others. Customers will be charged for browsing through the library to choose the music of their choice for download but considering the bigger picture, that turns out to be a paltry sum. So here is the real question. Will customers actually buy Virgin Mobile for their network and service, or will this music service supersede all the primary uses of the phone? The ‘Music Unlimited’ service is sure to rope in youth, but somehow the network coverage of Virgin seems to be somewhat of a problem that the music won’t be able to make users overlook. In the long run, unless they improve their coverage, they will not be able to increase their customer base by much. Coming back to ‘Music Unlimited’, well what are you Virgin users waiting for? Start downloading! Do you think Virgin will increase customers with ‘Music Unlimited’? Related Posts Universal Music Comes To Your Mobile Through RCom DoT now eyes the Idea-Spice Mobile Deal Shyam telelink Gets CDMA Spectrum For Maharshtra and Kerela Circle. Some Telcos Favour Delinking While Some Oppose – To Link, Or Not To Link? RCom Introduces Universal Plan, Local And STD calls At 50 paise Workshop On Social Media For Business Register Here Looking for a Social Media Agency? Try WATConsult – India’s Leading Social Media Agency

Tagged as: business, customer, Indian, mobile, network, news, phone, virgin-mobile, youth

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