India: analysis of emerging mobile application opportunities

Abstract

There is an app for that goes the famous apple marketing catchphrase. App was termed the word of the year 2010 by American Dialect Society. Indeed app revolution is happening. Apple App store clocked more than 4, 00,000 apps and 10 billion downloads by Jan 2011[14]. Android Market by Google claims to have reached more than 2, 00,000 apps and 1 B downloads by Dec 2010. As per Gartner, mobile app industry was worth $6.2B in 2010 and is poised to be worth $29.5B by 2013[14]. Buoyed by the grant success of Apple and Google app market places, many device manufacturers, third parties and carriers have started putting up their own app market places with varying levels of success. These include Indian carriers like Airtel and Aircel. Though the smart phone app phenomena started picking up with Apple iPhone, mobile market went through several application/service delivery models in the last 20 years. From the humble SMS and SIM Toolkit apps to WAP based internet apps to downloadable apps, smart phone apps are just the latest evolution step. Mobile VAS services accounted for more than 20% revenues for carriers worldwide in 2010 [8]. J2ME based downloadable apps were the first to reach critical mass and are still popular across the globe owing to wide reach of platform. India has a relatively smaller base of smart phones (10m+), though growing at a high rate of 294% year on year [9]. More than 95% of the mobile devices in circulation belongs to basic and feature phone category. Only 1 in 5 mobile phones are internet enabled. App eco systems are still to mature with developers finding the going tough. These factors along with large digital divide and slow adoption of technologies mar the Indian mobile applications market. In this study, we would try to evaluate opportunities that exist in the Indian mobile application space and their potential. Market dynamics, consumer segments and specific opportunities to target these segments shall be identified based on primary and secondary research. Special emphasis would be given in discovering India specific opportunities that are not apparent from secondary research as of today. The potential of opportunities would be estimated based on various parameters including expected 3G/4G penetration levels, income growth, digital literacy, device capabilities and affordability of data services. Through this analysis, we aim to prioritize mobile application opportunities emerging in India based on potential and to identify target segments, target technologies, and market positioning for each of these opportunities. The study would be limited to analysis of opportunities in B2C space alone due to resource and time constraints.