State of Telecom Industry in Pakistan

How much would an unlocked (or liberated as some call it) iPhone cost in countries like Pakistan? Expect to pay around Rs.75,000 ($1250) or more. Ridiculous, to say the least, in a world where 2.7 billion people live below 2 dollars a day. Now that I’ve finished my rant, lets talk about the availability and technical stuff.

Apple intends to make the phone available in Europe in Q4 2007 and in Asia in 2008. Even though official distribution channels for the world outside US may take a while to be established but the phone (and its clones) will be available soon, depending on how soon hackers unlock it. Most probably consumers in Pakistan will not have to wait long for iPhone. Unlocking is not going to matter a lot as the original network related features of the phone were not state-of-the-art to begin with. Let’s see when the 3G version of iPhone comes out.

Why would iPhone matter? There are two main areas: one is the breakthrough interface and design. Other is the data features which require a network such as WiFi.

In my opinion, iPhone makes sense for:

Leaving the details to others I’ll just mention one thing: iPhone runs a full version of safari browser, which has recently been introduced for windows as well. The safari browser is an important piece here as it allows developers to create apps. According to fiercewireless at the WWDC conference, Apple CEO Steve Jobs told developers that they didn’t need an SDK to write apps for the iPhone–they can start building Safari-based mobile Web 2.0 apps now. But beware: The Safari browser in iPhone supports neither Adobe Flash nor Java.

On a related note RSS is being touted as a killer application for iPhone but in reality its not the first phone to offer RSS – Flurry already offers RSS on majority of the phones.

Reviews and Further Information:

As mentioned at macworld: For a product that hasn’t even been released yet, there’s sure a lot of information out there about the iPhone. To name a few: Apple’s 40-plus minutes of marketing videos, early reviews and at USA Today, and Newsweek.

I’ll finish this with a quick review of how competitors are handling this threat from Apple.
- pointing out iPhone’s shortcomings
- touting their better network features
- introducing their own rival phones: - See this WSJ article
- Nokia was forced to do a whole re-organization due to iPhone!

In Part 2  I am presenting additional news and views about growth and competition in the mobile industry of China, India and Pakistan. As you will read below, India and China are directly competing to dominate the handset markets of the world. Pakistan is not in the picture as it does not manufacture mobile phones and rakes up big import bills.

First, an analysis by Brough Turner, Comparing Telecom growth in India and China in which he compares the teledensity and growth rates for the two countries from 2006. This is one of the few direct analysis using data available from different sources. He also touches upon the blurry line between mobile and wireless local loop about which I wrote as well.

 
Top 10 Emerging Mobile Markets - Source: Unstrung.com

Second, I am sharing an article titled Tale of two cell phone markets: India and China by Mike Clendenin, published at Electronic Engineering Times. The focus of the article is on mobile handset and electronics industry. Here’s some selected  text, with my comments in italics:

The buzz these days is that India is the “new China” of the cellular world. All the big multinationals have piled onto the subcontinent, chasing trendsetters in Mumbai as well as first-time buyers in remote villages. “They are the key drivers for the marketplace,” said David Taylor, India-based director of strategic operations in Motorola’s High Growth Markets unit.

Expansion in India now rivals China, the world’s largest cellular market. At least 5 million to 6 million Indians are signing up each month and about 7 million in a hot month. China? close to 5 million (6 by some estimates).  The number for Pakistan is 2.5 million based on 2007 data. Overall, China still trumps India for subscribers, at more than 480 million. India is on fire, though. Subscribers nearly doubled last year, to 149.5 million, and should hit 484 million by 2011, according to market researcher iSuppli Corp.

India is adding fuel to an already hot global trend. Since 2002, handset sales in developing countries have jumped threefold, compared with 62 percent in developed countries, according to Strategy Analytics Inc. It forecasts that 65 percent of handsets sold this year will be bought in emerging markets.

Yet the rapid ascension of India shows that not all emerging markets are alike. Beijing and Bombay may both be supersized cities in gigantic markets, but there are probably more differences than similarities in the way these places are growing, especially in the supply chain.

China has a relatively large chip industry, targeting local growth in communications; India does not. Pakistan’s chip industry is relatively insignifcant. China has more than 75 companies making handsets; India has only a few. China develops globally competitive telecom gear; India does not. The list goes on.

This is a relief to multinationals, although they may not publicly admit it. As things stand, global chip and handset makers won’t see a new crop of margin-destroying competitors rise as quickly in India as they did in China.

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