Market analysis and value models for value added services for mobiles

Abstract

The mobile telecommunications industry is currently growing leaps and bounds all over the world, and in particular developing countries like India. While the growth might be in terms of subscribers, the Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) is flatting. This is leading to the network operators looking towards mobile applications also called as Mobile Value Added Services (Mobile VAS) to supplement the revenues. Mobile V AS is a interesting new industry category that has not been researched much with India in perspective. This project report summarizes the various mobile VAS applications that are deployment by many of the operators in the world and categorizes them. A round up of the mobile VAS offered by the Indian mobile network operators is conducted and compared with other operators of the developed world. In order to develop a value-model for one of the mobile VAS called Colour-Notes, a questionnaire based survey was conducted, and results analyzed. Based on this analysis, and other research on diffusion of innovations, a diffusion model for Colour-Notes was developed utilizing the data from the survey. Using this diffusion model, a more accurate value-model was created, which gave a more realistic picture of the financial benefits to both the vendor of the mobile VAS as well as the mobile network operator.