Once termed as most promising sector for investment, Indian Wireless Sector is currently reeling under tremendous pressure to revive their business. The voice centric users are shying away from mobility service provider MVAS due to multiple reason and at the same time increasingly using mobility service provider network for data. The increasing usage of data is limited to web surfing especially social networking sites. Indian mobility service providers are still struggling in attracting more users willing to pay for applications instead users are using Google Play or Apple Store to download free applications.
In order to differentiate their value added service play, most of the mobility service providers are collaborating with big players in social networking, unified messaging and unified communication. The intention of mobility service providers is to increase the data usage and earn from users on the basis of data usages. On reviewing multiple mobility service providers’ online portal, it is evident that most of them are now offering free few months of access of top social network site and subsequently charge them on monthly basis.
The move is going to be working fine but it’s not a sustainable model for mobility service providers. Mobility users can easily download applications of social sites and use them heavily by taking bundled data plan at a very low cost. Most of the device OEM’s are already burning most prominent social networking player mobile applications in order to differentiate themselves.
Indian Mobility Service Providers must recognize that the business model cannot be sustained by playing OTT success card even though its OTT players who damaged Mobility Service Providers the most. The Mobility Service Providers cannot live in self denial and not to focus on in-house product innovation. It’s high time, Mobility Service Provider also include in-house development of cutting edge product or services or applications in order to own the Intellectual property rights as well as to have more sustainable recurring revenue.
