India being one of the hot destinations for global and domestic mobility player to tap Indian mobility user’s from diverse categories. The active mobility user base of 740 million out of total registered mobile user base of 870 million created niche innovation segment focused towards mobile applications. The growing adoption of Smartphone which is more than 44 million in the last fiscal year communicated well about user adoption pattern on the device side. At the same time one must not ignore that feature phone market still command above 75% of the total device with most having data communication capabilities indicate that India users are still predominately cost and performance conscious. Most of the mobility users are moving from mobile operator hosted simple VAS services based on voice, SMS to data centric applications, product and services.
The Applications segment possess huge opportunity for niche and established players to gain maximum user base and inturn be differentiated. During the race of acquiring more user base, somewhere somehow; application developers completely ignored the need of mobility user. If one looks at the current model of applications offering, it is very clear that most of the brand especially e-commerce or entertainment or Games or classified or security or system tools specific applications are floating in each and every application centre. Indian mobility users which is using high end device with price tag of 15-25k should be considered as prosumer’s and may understand the mechanism of using such applications. During the process, application providers are retrieving all personal information of device user under the pretext of Terms and Condition and reuse it on multiple fronts. Indian device users are fond of such applications which are ONE TAP and fast. The expectations are of good quality video on demand or live TV but unfortunately, Indian mobility network is still under the evaluation end when it comes to data coverage. Even though Mobile operators are very aggressive in claiming that wireless data connectivity is good but they must come out of self imposed myth in order to identify the problem and solve it for the better mobile user retention.
As Indian mobility users are cost conscious and wants to have applications free but without imposed advertisements or flood of notification of additional applications. Indian applications market is ripe of applications which offer consumer information management which directly connect and solve consumer and prosumer daily life needs if Applications providers really needs to make loyal application user base. There are multiple applications offering device system tools which are nothing but the realigned application of Android feature set. There applications providers reaches out to end consumer in one or another medium and making consumer more confused. The solution providers of such applications must create tiered applications which seamless guide user or execute the functionalities offered to consumer. Lastly and most important the applications must be dynamic in populating information based on the inputs of consumer and prosumer choices.
Currently, mobility users are being used by Applications providers to create consumer adoption pattern module rather than fulfilling consumer needs and one should not be surprised in case of government watchdog jumps in to protect consumer privacy.
