i3G spectrum and iPhone reviews

A post on mobile and India after a really long time. Interest got rekindled after reading the lovely interview on Indian @ Wharton with ISB’s Ravi Bapna (I gotta mail him) and Stern’s Arun Sundarajan on Spectrum revenues and Infrastructure subsidy. Excerpts from the interview:

looks like the infrastructure rollout costs over the next few years to get to that target of a few hundred million subscribers are going to be on the order of a minimum of $20-25 billion. But the flipside is that the revenue opportunity is actually extremely large given the numbers.

You don’t know how these things unfold. The rural segment could well surprise us in terms of the usage. Of course, there is a big market for micro credit, for insurance and for all kinds of services to get out there.

I think the more important issue is that the Defense Ministry and the Telecommunications Ministry need to really sit down together — perhaps under the aegis of the Prime Minister’s office — and take this as a national priority and resolve the issues. I think that is the key issue, and I think once that gets held, the spectrum should get rolled out. The operators are ready. Talking to them, they are just waiting for the regulatory “cholesterol” to sort of disappear and they want to start making money.

As Ravi mentioned, there are at least three layers here. You’ve got device manufacturers. You’ve got infrastructure and service providers. And you’ve got content providers. And unless there is a strong enough belief among the content providers that there’s going to be sufficient infrastructure fast enough, the content is not going to appear. If the content does not appear, the value of the infrastructure as perceived by the consumer is lower.

Nokia has a big manufacturing facility now, and they are trying to look at ethnographically how people in emerging markets would use the phone differently. So, things that they can learn from [India] probably would translate well into other emerging markets all over the world.

Overall, I think the picture looks good on these fronts. But getting these three or four key constituencies aligned in one direction, particularly the content side and fostering innovation …

and then just mentioning a bit about the iPhone – this review from the BBC and Engadget sums it up!! Excerpt from the BBC review:

Apple’s claim that the iPhone is five years ahead of any other mobile is nonsense, in terms of actual tech specifications. In particular, the antiquated data system lets it down badly. However, as a user experience it is probably about 10 years ahead.

Using the iPhone makes you feel quite angry towards other mobile manufacturers. What have they been doing? Fobbing us of with such truly awful interfaces?

However, I am conscious that where we do benefit on other platforms is the wealth of third party applications. If Apple could sort out the camera, data speed and keyboard the iPhone would still not be perfect, but it wouldn’t be far off.

capturing divided attention

Quote of the day from OM:

The strategy is typical of Apple: it lets the market reach a point of confusion, and then starts offering a service that emphasizes ease of use and elegant out of the box experience.

indian context – ipods and music phones!

My favourite topic – media, gadgets and trends and spice it up with some apple thrashing / defense Will phones replace iPods? Head over to Communities dominate brands for some excellent defense I just loved these 1 2 3 posts …

Some arguments I would like to highlight …

Digital cameras vs camera phones:

Game over. Two of the four are already dead. Why are Canon and Nikon only reporting 30% and 20% growth? If there was any strong market for cameras, they would pick up all of Minolta-Konica’s customers (and be up at least 50%). When two of the world’s largest manufacturers of the industry totally quit, thats a pretty strong sign that the time for that technology is over. Cameraphones today offer 5 Megapixel resolutions, 3x optical zooms, 20x digital zooms, built-in flashes etc. Its not ever going to replace the professional digital camera – the wedding photographer will not show up with a Motorola – but this is a point the camera industry admitted in 2004 – they lost the battle.

iPods, US and musicphones:

The actual current state of musicphones is very alien to those who commented. As most of them tend to be from America, it is to be expected. By accident of timing, the iPod is best selling in North America, and cellphones (including musicphones) are least advanced in America. So what is quite common in Asia or Europe with more advanced cellphones, cellular networks, and wireless carriers, may still seem like impossible for many Americans.

Facts:

So please bear in mind that the FACT of the drop in sales in iPods from 14.1 million to 8.5 million to 8.1 million comes from Apple numbers, and the 40% drop have been confirmed by Apple COO on April 19 and the further 6% drop confirmed by Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer.

Lovely ending!

And we also want to be responsive to all. It does go to the very heart of the topic of this blogsite and our book, that Communities Dominate. We want to engage with you.

And yeah taking it in the Indian context – a place where iPod has permeated to a decent extent thanks primarily to the underground market. I doubt whether the Indian consumer will really go for it! FM is seen as integral part of a phone and digital cameras -  most of them are seeing it thanks only to the feature in a phone .. ha ha! The canons and nikons has missed a huge market … zombies. Canon doesn’t even have a good support / repair center. My DSLR’s lens stopped working and the repair charge was apparently what I paid for buying it in the US … blame me