mo:life - tracing mobile media

Manoj Dawane, CEO, People Infocom (Mauj Mobile)

editor — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 03:29:21 +0000

Manoj Dawane is the CEO of People Infocom (Mauj Mobile), the wireless division of People Group that owns interactive websites such as Shaadi.com, Fropper.com and Astrolife.com. Consumer demand has been keeping his company on its toes—urging it to constantly churn out new concepts and services to differentiate its offering. For Dawane, innovation will drive the growth of this sector in India over the coming years. He hopes that his 15 years of experience in the telecom and software industry will come in handy in the company’s bid to improve customer experience.
Mo:life

Please give a brief description of Mauj Mobile. Where can you place it in the overall mobile content space in India?

Manoj Dawane

Mauj Mobile is one of India’s leading Mobile Value Added Solutions providers, catering to Telecom Operators, Media & Entertainment Companies and Consumer brands through its various divisions. Our area of expertise in the Mobile Technology domain lies in:

• Content Creation, Aggregation & Global Distribution
• Managed Services
• Mobile Marketing & Campaign Management
• Mobile Advertising

What sets us apart from our contemporaries is our expertise across domains and operations in the mobile technology space. In the VAS value chain we are a unique player that is — content/application owner, an aggregator, a software developer and a technology enabler – all rolled together into one.

Mo:life

Mauj Mobile seems to be targeting a young audience. Can you give us some demographic details about the users of mobile content? Do poor people, old people use these devices?

Manoj Dawane

Mobile as a medium reaches out to audiences across demographics. Given the different businesses that we operate in, we do tap consumers across age groups and income-levels. For instance, our content downloads (Games, Wallpapers, Animations, Ringtones, etc) are more prominent amongst the youth. However, our Brand Solutions and Mobile Advertising business has a different audience and targets brand managers and media agencies. Then again for Managed Services we work closely with leading operators in India and across the globe.

Mo:life

Ringtones and downloadable wallpaper seem to be an extremely basic
utilization of mobile technologies. Can you describe this market (size,
growth)? Also, can you tell us how media companies like Mauj are
thinking about their mobile users? Are they simply people with a
handheld device that can download stuff - or are you beginning to target
them, as a specific audience with their own needs and demands?

Manoj Dawane

While Ringtones and Wallpapers are major contributors to the MVAS content business, utility services are on an upward incline as well. Moving on to the latter part of your question, mobile phone has long since evolved from being a handheld downloading device to an extension of an individual’s personality. Trends, seasons, festivals and peers largely influence content consumption and there is a constant need to target consumers specifically in keeping with their preferences and to deliver content that would be best consumed by them.

Mo:life

The GPRS Dating looks interesting. Can you describe this for our
Australian audience? Is it using location capabilities of mobiles? Or is
it just a dating application that can be used via a mobile web browser?

Manoj Dawane

The GPRS Dating service allows you to create your profile on the mobile, search for other interesting profiles based on age, gender and location and send messages to the profiles you are interested in.
However, given the fact that India is a country where marriage and weddings are important milestones in an individual’s life and have a huge social significance, dating services here lag behind in comparison to matrimonial services. We have worked with our sister concern Shaadi.com, the world’s largest matrimonial service to make the world-class product available on the mobile platform etc. With every brand and product today vying for mobile space, Shaadi.com too wanted to provide its members with a convenient and on-the-go service, catering to both GPRS and non-GPRS users, a requisite that a simple Wapsite would not be able to suffice. That’s when we stepped into the picture to develop a 360-degree mobile presence for the matrimonial service – a Wapsite, an ODP (On Device Portal), a SMS service and a Voice Portal. GPRS users could use the wap services and the ODP, while non-GPRS users could create a profile, browse profiles, express interest and send messages to interested members through the SMS and Voice Services.

Mo:life

In Australia, filmmakers and television producers are interested in
mobiles as an exhibition platform, which has some unique features. Can you
tell us more about the ‘mobisodes’ you offer and other companies are
offering? Are people actually watching and reading this stuff online?
Are the scripts being altered to suit a mobile audience, or is it just
existing content being cut up in to mini episodes? Are mobile-specific
scripts being written?

Manoj Dawane

All content for the mobile phone needs to be repurposed to suit the mobile format. We have created a product called ‘M-Premiere’ which allows you to view trailers and special scenes refurbished specifically for mobile phones. We have used ‘M-Premiere’ to give viewers a first look of movies like Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna, RGV Ki Aag, Money Hai Toh Honey Hai and even Kamal Hassan’s Dasavathaaram.

Mo:life

Mo:life is trying to understand the nature of the mobile user. Is it
possible for you to look in to the future (3 to 5 years) and give us a
description of how you envisage Indians and South Asians utilizing their
mobile phones. We hope they’ll be doing more than downloading ringtones!
What do you think?

Manoj Dawane

Entertainment and telecommunications are two important industries that converge to form the mobile entertainment industry. Both of these industries today are presented with immense opportunity, and that translates into an even bigger prospect for the Mobile Entertainment space in particular.
The opportunities in India are enormous based solely on the sheer size and exponential market growth-rate. India has a colossal music and film industry and the introduction of 3G technology later this year will only facilitate a better way to reach a mass-market audience in a country of more than one billion inhabitants. With 3G, services like Mcommerce and video conferencing are bound to pick up momentum.
Other than serving as a portable entertainment console, the upswing of utility services will see the Mobile Phone emerge as device of commercial and informational significance.

Mo:life

Let’s talk briefly about the income generation side of things.
What’s the business model for delivering content for mobile phones? For
your company, what has worked so far? Can you comment on future business
models?

Manoj Dawane

As far as content is concerned, the revenue is divided amongst a number of stakeholders in stipulated shares – Telcos, the Content Owner, and the Content Aggregator. For us, the fact that we double up as the Content Owner and the Content Aggregator on several occasions adds to our advantage. For instance, we had created a huge portfolio of Geeta Shlokas. (The Bhagwad Geeta is the Holy Book of the Hindus and the Shlokas are verses from the Geeta in praise of God). We worked with these Shlokas and rendered them as Tones (Ringtones and CRBTs). In this case, we became the Content Owner and the Content Aggregator together since we had created the entire portfolio ourselves and had also repurposed the recordings to suit Mobile formats.
Mobile advertising as a business model is also catching up and we have powered this means of promotion for a number of brands in the country.

Mo:life

Do you get filmmakers or other creative people pitching you ideas?
We’d like to know if India’s creative community is looking at the mobile
seriously, or whether they consider it just another outlet, like DVDs.

Manoj Dawane

In India, ringtones are the most common film related content downloaded onto the mobile phone. Going by prevailing trends, every Bollywood movie release has a telecom content partner, going to indicate the eminence this medium has attained as a promotional device. Filmmakers in India are constantly looking at offerings that are innovative and have consumer appeal. We have worked with a plethora of Bollywood movies, repurposing the film details for the mobile screens, and always creating something new has been a pre-requisite for every movie we have worked with. The latest services we have created are Interactive Voice Portals, which give fans an audio experience of the film and the starcast.
As we see it, mobile visibility allows a film to create a recall factor, and build on the popularity quotient. It is a means of touching audiences on-the-go. And considering that the mobile phone today has phenomenal penetration rates, it becomes a perfect channel to reach across the length and breadth of geographies.

Mo:life

We read about your Real Estate Mobile Application? Is it just an SMS
advertising strategy, or are we missing something?

Manoj Dawane

Real estate agents in India are a mobile-friendly community and SMS as a feature is extremely popular with them. The Makaan Mobile application was primarily designed to provide an attractive non-web alternative to property sellers who initially needed to log on to the Internet either to list their property or to view responses from interested buyers.
With Makaan Mobile, once the agent has downloaded the application on his phone, he begins receiving alerts in the form of SMS everytime someone shows interest in his listings. India has a subscriber base of close to 300 million, and according to a report by Standford-BDA, SMS (including P2P, A2P, P2A), contributed over 55% of total VAS revenues in 2006, hence proving to be an ideal mechanism to reach a target audience that is mobile friendly and constantly on the go.

Mo:life

The final question. We ask this of all our interview subjects. Where do you see mobile content companies such as yours in the future?
Will you exist as independent companies, or will the Telco operators
simply duplicate what you do, once they work out what’s successful on
the mobile spectrum?

Manoj Dawane

With markets getting more specific and customer satisfaction being the need of the day, MVAS companies like us, are evolving to be an Innovation Crucible. We’re looking ahead to welcome the future with customized solutions and enhanced value for the customer.

Nokia unveils mobile TV channel

editor — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 10:21:47 +0000

Last week, handset major, Nokia unveiled its own mobile television channel in an attempt to showcase its latest multimedia device and persuade users to finally embrace watching programmes on the move.
The Finnish handset manufacturer, which supplies four out of every 10 phones sold, has created a series of 96-second programmes.
Six new programmes – on motoring, fashion, gadgets, comedy, culture and homes – will launch on October 1 and are designed to show off the multimedia capabilities of Nokia’s new N96 handset.
Last week, Nokia announced a tie-up with the BBC that would allow N96 users to access its popular iPlayer 7-day catchup service. Previously, Apple’s iPhone was the only mobile compatible with iPlayer.

No meltdown in mobile services

editor — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 10:20:21 +0000

Feeling blue about the state of the world’s financial markets? Here’s a bit of cheerful news about one area of the economy that’s still powering ahead: mobile phone service.
According to a study released Sept. 22 by London-based market researcher Informa Telecoms and Media, the number of mobile subscriptions around the world will reach 4 billion by the end of this year; just 15 months after the market topped 3 billion.
The engine for this rapid growth, Informa says, is emerging markets. Both China and India have added more than 50 million new mobile subscribers in the last six months alone. There has also been huge growth—in excess of 10 million subscribers—in Indonesia, Vietnam, Brazil, Iran, Pakistan, Russia, and Nigeria.
The fastest-growing region in the next few years, predicts the report, will be Asia Pacific, with 7.51% compound annual growth. The slowest will be heavily-penetrated Western Europe, with just 2.55%.

Mobile buzz: It gets louder in the rural areas

editor — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 10:18:44 +0000

Far from being considered a social obligation, offering telecom services in rural areas has now become the hot spot for private telecom operators, says a news report. In India, nearly 75 per cent of the mobile users in the villages are now owned by private operators as cellular phones catch the imagination of rural consumers. According to numbers released by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, nearly 21 per cent of the mobile user base now resides in the villages of India, where a few years ago none of the operators wanted to venture. As on September 2007, out of the 209 million mobile users in the entire country, 43 million were in rural areas.
Indeed, rural mobile user base is more than the number of total fixed line telephone subscribers in the country, which has dwindled down to around 35 million, according to TRAI.
Market watchers also pointed out that with as many as five new operators planning a pan- Indian network, they will be banking on the unconnected villages to get them afoot into the market. The Government has set a target of 500 million telephone users by 2010, of which about 200 million is expected to come from the rural areas.

Mobile use risky for children?

editor — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 10:16:32 +0000

Here’s another study that warns that children who use mobile phones are five times more likely to develop brain tumours than those who don’t. The findings were presented at a British conference, recently.
Earlier a Swedish study had indicated that under-16s were more at risk of radiation from mobile phones because their brains and nervous systems are still developing.
However a few scientists have expressed doubt about these findings, saying it takes years for cancer to develop and mobile phone use is a relatively new phenomenon. In this context, the World Health Organisation and the Australian Centre for Radiofrequency Bioeffects Research endorse the view that mobile phones DO NOT cause ill-health.

The regulator swings into action to safeguard mobile banking

editor — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 10:15:08 +0000

Driven by the rapid growth in the number of mobile phone subscribers in India, the country’s apex bank (RBI) has finally issued guidelines for mobile banking.
According to the guidelines, a transaction limit of $55 (Rs 2,500) will be imposed on all mobile banking transactions, and there will also be an overall cap of $110 (Rs 5,000) per day, per customer. The guidelines also say that the banks may also put in place a monthly transaction limit, depending on the bank’s own risk perception of the customer.
Proper levels of encryption and security are to be implemented at all stages to guard against the use of mobile banking in money laundering, frauds and so on.

More cell phones than credit cards in the world

editor — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 10:13:09 +0000

Would you believe it — there are now more mobile phones than cars or credit cards in the world? That’s a figure that Google’s engineering director Andy Rubin highlights in a company blog ahead of its launch of T-Mobile that uses Google’s Android operating system, which is a mobile open source.
As well as being ubiquitous, Mr Rubin maintains cellphones are “Ten times more powerful than the PC you had on your desk only eight or nine years ago.”

To find out more about this Android operating system, quickly log on to this link. It will lead you to a Dummies’ guide to mobile open source. The site also objectively discusses its various pros and cons.

UN, mobile phone firm launch peace campaign in Kenya

editor — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 16:40:00 +0000

Kenya’s leading mobile phone operator, Safaricom and the United Nations on Thursday launched a peace initiative dubbed the Text For Peace Campaign to enable Kenyans send peace text messages ahead of the International Peace Day.

Safaricom CEO Michael Joseph told a news conference in Nairobi the campaign will run from Sept. 18 to 21 during which Kenyans will be invited to send messages of peace to short code 222, provided by Safaricom.
Kenya’s Constitutional Affairs Minister Martha Karua urged Kenyans to unite the country by sending peace messages especially after the post-election crisis which nearly brought down the East African nation’s economy.
“We never know how precious peace is until it is disrupted. It’s through communication that we convey hate and peace messages. Kenyans should value peace and not disturb anybody’s peace,” she said.

Phone came preloaded with porn

editor — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 16:38:46 +0000

A student bought a mobile phone from Dick Smith Electronics and was shocked to find it contained pornographic pictures of staff. A university student who bought a mobile phone found it “contained pornographic images of a female employee from a Cairns Dick Smith Electronics store where she had just bought the phone,” reports The Cairns Post in Australia. http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2008/sep/18/mobilephones

“I have worked for several mobile phone retail outlets. Trust me.. This happens all the time… Sales staff ‘borrow’ a phone for the weekend and forget to wipe the memory. I personally know of 4 instances when this exact thing has happend in a store I have worked in,” a reader wrote in.
Another poster, Christine, commented: I also worked for a mobile phone repair company, and we used to get replacement units back from manufacturers full of porn. These units weren’t checked by the techs before they were given out so I’m sure it happened more often than what we were told about - it was only old people or prudes who would complain about it!

Comunicating from a Mountain Top

editor — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 16:35:43 +0000

Imagine being able to communicate with video images anywhere in the world. Regardless of the connection you still have a good image of the person you are communicating with. Ulrik Söderström from Digital Media Lab, Umea University in Sweden, has developed a technique that enables this. The technique is so powerful that it is possible to use video with HDTV-quality and transmit it over the regular cellular phone network.
The equipment that is used today is a backpack with a video camera mounted on a bar in front of the person wearing it or a small camera mounted on a helmet.
“In the near future the equipment can be so small that it is like using a hands-free, but in this case for video communication,” says Ulrik Söderström.
His research regards video and how you can compress the images so that they can be transmitted over any kind of connection while still maintaining high image quality.