State of Telecom Industry in Pakistan

Recently PTA organized a conference on the topic of promoting local content. This event was sponsored by Motorola. It appears that a new ICT policy is in the works.

I wish the press release had more information and specific details about the local content providers and their applications. It would also be useful if they could share the plan for commercializing these apps. I am interested in finding out more about the channels through which these apps will be available and what will be the cost structure. How will the govt or PTA contribute?

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The latest PR affirms State Bank of Pakistan and PTA are closely working on a unified policy for mobile banking that will connect all banks of the country with cellular mobile operators for mobile transactions. No mentions about where the existing mobile banking framework will stand with it.

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Mobile banking has undoubtedly taken the lead with the collaborative mobile banking model, where collaboration takes place between the carriers and the banks who can distribute the roles of the value chain amongst themselves. An example of this is ‘easypaisa‘ from Telenor Pakistan and Tameer Bank.

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Lesson from emerging telecom market – when revenues per user from voice are going down, find creative ways to encourage users to spend on other (data) services. And that’s what Indian cell phone companies have done by offering radio, sports and other entertainment and religious services over cell phones to rural areas, where such services had never reached before. ARPU comparison below is from a recent WSJ article on the mobile VAS market in India. And this dear readers, is the answer to the “suggest a title” mystery post. The woman in the picture was listening to radio on her cell phone.

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Comedy and joke apps on iPhone meet their equivalent in Pakistan – Warid Comedy Corner is a new service through which you pay to listen jokes and comedy.

The service brings you renowned & distinguished comedians along with their hilarious stand-up comedy sessions and gut-busting jokes in both Urdu and Punjabi. Just dial 420 from your handset.

The cost is Rs. 3/minute. See the list of comedians here. A service like this can be a good break on a tough day … although it may not be “a quick solution to all your tensions & worries”, as claimed on Warid’s web site.

By the way the 420 reminds me of another service by a competitor :)

Nokia has published information about the new Ovi ecosystem which includes handsets, software, developer tools along with mobile operators, 3rd party developers and users. An important element is the Ovi Store as a content intake and point of sales. On the developer tools side, the Ovi ecosystem comprises of Ovi APIs, consisting of Ovi Maps Player API and Ovi Navigation Player API as well as the Ovi SDK Beta and Ovi apps. See details below.

Technology Preview:
Ovi APIs (application programming interface) makes Ovi apps contextual and more relevant for consumers. Ovi APIs opens access to the industry leading context assets from Nokia, starting with Ovi Maps.

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Posting an excerpt from Flurry blog post which provides a unique perspective on mobile apps usage and retention.Flurry is the leading mobile analytics provider and has access to the data from a large pool of mobile apps. Application developers should take note of the insights offered here.

Mapping categories by usage frequency and retention also provides insights into pricing models. Quadrants I and IV (the right-hand side) are better suited, on average, to subscription (if supported by the respective app storefront) and advertising-supported models. The main reason is that these apps have perceived enduring value by consumers over a long period of time, and therefore more successfully retain their user bases. For ad-supported apps, this high repeat usage translates into more ad impressions served. Categories on the left-hand side, Quadrants II and III, are better suited for one-time download fees. Those apps may provide higher immediate satisfaction to users but their content, once consumed, rapidly loses their value.

The data in this report is computed from a sample size of over 2,00 live applications and over 200 million user sessions tracked each month across Apple (iPhone and iPod Touch), Google Android, Blackberry, JavaME platforms.

The promise and potential of advertising and marketing on mobile phones remains big but elusive. Here are a few observations from leading research firm Forrester research. Summary is that mobile data usage and smar, useful applications will drive usage high and cause the advertising to take off as well.

Mobile remains one of the most anticipated, least adopted interactive channels in the mix. Sure, plenty of “cool” mobile programs exist: Sapient created a “spin the bottle” iPhone application for The Coca-Cola Company.(see endnote 27) But complexity around metrics, marketer, content, and carrier relationships, plus limited consumer mobile data use, stifles mainstream mobile marketing adoption today. Marketers will prefer more established tools to mobile until mid-2011 when we anticipate post-recession adoption will escalate. What will contribute to mobile marketing’s 27% CAGR over the next five years?

Increasing mobile data usage. More than 50% of consumers with mobile phones sent or received text messages and 21% sent or received emails via a mobile device in 2008, compared with 46% and 15% who did the same in 2007.(see endnote 28) We expect reliance on mobile functions to further increase as mobile devices improve, applications proliferate, and influential mobile users lead others to experiment.

Strategic mobile application development. Everyone is jumping on the mobile application bandwagon. iPhone reports more than 35,000 available apps ranging from iFart — an electronic whoopee cushion — to mobile bill pay apps sponsored by Wells Fargo or JPMorgan Chase.

Mobile maturity. As mobile matures as a marketing medium, its usefulness to marketers will improve. For example, the Code of Conduct for Mobile Marketing and Mobile Advertising Guidelines from the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) take an initial pass at standards. New mobile capabilities like mobile search from Google, Microsoft’s Bing, and Yahoo! will provide additional, familiar inventory. Advances in RFID and in-store technologies will tie mobile communications to end sales. And the broad rollout of near field communications (NFC) will turn mobile devices into points of sale. As part of the NFC forum, Nokia recruits firms like Citigroup’s Citibank, the Frankfurt RMV, and The Royal Bank of Scotland into NFC trials to help establish the physical infrastructure and marketer buy-in needed to make NFC work.

A recent poll on the frequency of use of GPRS/EDGE services among consumers revealed that data services users are few but increasing.

One thing is very clear, the mobile data usage can never match the voice usage. But I believe it still has a lot of room to grow. The operators with their attention on the voice users should also focus on the data services. We still lack in making the data services known to common masses. Operators can play a pivotal role here in awareness of the mobile data services.

When mobile phones came consumers were already aware of telephonic voice services and voice going mobile was appreciated by all and thus mobile gained popularity. But when SMS entered the market it wasn’t much appreciated because consumer were not really aware of its potential. In fact SMS was rarely used and was costly. But then some steps like making it free for limited time, reducing the cost, bringing in unlimited usage packages (bundles) made SMS an invincible necessity.

Now we have the GPRS/EDGE based data services which are not known by a majority of mobile users. The operators need to run a campaign first to educate the consumers of the potential use of data services and then make these services accessible for all.

A few ways I think this can be done:

1. Facebook Mobile. We have a huge base of Facebook users in Pakistan. Many of these users would use it from the mobile if  it was easy and cheap.
2. Email. Blackberrry aside, using email from other phones is not widespread yet. Awareness of Mobile Email clients needed.
3. Mobile Web and Content. This is one of the big things which iPhone accomplished but still needs to widespread.
4. Location Based Services. Maps, directions, local information, coupons based on your location.

All the latest mobile set support the mobile data services, awareness will make the  little shift in the mind-sets needed to boost these data services which will make room for 3G services.

This post is a continuation of the talk about mobile apps. Our first featured mobile app, Tell My Story has been developed by Zia Imran and team at Vahzay.

TellMyStory is the iPhone application that brings your photos to life with Pan and Zoom effects, background music and comments. You can record your comments and emotions right when you take your pictures, add animation and music to them and send them to friends and family half way around the globe with the click of a button. See this video for more information about how the app works. Integration with facebook is in the works as well.

Application stores like Ovi are not all about entertainment, as some may think. The goal is to serve as many segments as possible. Islamic apps are big business and Ovi wants to promote its brand by providing these free apps. More at nokia.com/Ramadan or from the Download folder on the main menu on their Nokia device.

This year’s Ramadan applications are feature packed, and include the Holy Quran, Prayer Times, Hadeeth, Zakah Calculator, Mozzaker, Hajj and Umrah and Cards. New features include Quran recitation from multiple recitors, which users can choose to download, based on their preference and in MP3 form. Prayer timings and Qibla direction are provided for 1000 cities in 200 countries, along with the ability to add, remove, update and edit any location using the GPS. The new Zakah Calculator helps Muslims calculate Zakah based on their income.

The Ramadan applications are developed by ASGATech, a Forum Nokia Premium Partner in the Middle East, with all content reviewed and approved by Al Azhar Al Shareef.

WSJ published an interesting story about the surge in use of abbreviations in text messages. I think that Twitter has made these even more popular and speeded up their acceptance in mainstream lingo. As the story mentions, LOL and OMG are already in the standard English dictionaries. Parents are one group who may need this info!

With over one trillion text messages sent and received in the U.S. last year, according to CTIA-The Wireless Association, an industry trade group, you run the risk of feeling out of it if you don’t know the jargon.

Here are a few popular shorthand texting terms. My question is: Are there any such abbreviations for Roman Urdu? LMK (let me know).