One of the focus areas that Lakshya is committed to is Mobile applications, specifically what is technically known in the mobile industry as MVAS or Mobile Value Added Services. To start off with let us look into some figures to justify the focus –
- Mobile Value Added Services is an estimated USD 340 mn business by 2009 (approx INR 1292 crores)
- Value added applications in the field of Information Services is going to be 25% of the above predicted amount – around USD 83 mn (approx INR 323 crores)
- Mobile operators in order to survive must provide “killer” VAS to hold on to subscribers, once the rate-based revenues saturate.
- Even though mobile operators are seeing increasing revenues, but they are a worried lot, because the revenue is coming from increasing number of subscribers which will soon saturate.
- 80% of subscriber base is Pre-paid and hence volatile. Number portability will only increase this volatility
- Operators need to hold onto customers as well as devise alternate revenue streams – answer to both is VAS.
In short the ARPU (Average Revenue Per User) is going to down steadily, which is alarming. The superficial revenue increase that is happening today is because of new subscribers coming in, which will soon saturate. After all how many mobile subscriptions do you have and need? Maybe 1 or 2, what happens after that?
Mobile operators in India and across the world can clearly see the writing on the wall that simple call services or smsing is not going to earn them booming revenues any more. What they need is as mentioned a “killer” application and which ever content developer comes with out that app will almost monopolize.
A mobile-based contact and relationship management application meant to be used by professionals for whom better time and relationship management translates into better business