As per the trend, Bharti Airtel again initiated to change the market dynamics and this time around his initial focus turns on Music steaming. In recent years, it was predominantly visible that MVAS business going down post MVAS regulations and none of the innovative product was offering by MVAS players to help revive Mobile operator VAS business. Most of the operator centric VAS companies realigned their strategy on Mobile applications to sustain the dynamic industry change. The dwindling revenue from VAS segment and subsequent predominant situation of MVAS players to demand for level playing revenue share discussion offered enough indications that Mobile operators in India is losing edge and even their trusted partners turning their back.
The inclusion of fresh thoughts during one of the toughest transition of Bharti Airtel history, at last innovation received thumps up. The launched network and device agnostic music applications WYNX coupled with online and offline support is a master stroke from Bharti Airtel to reignite the MVAS revenue stream and subsequently higher data network utilization. Bharti Airtel went one step ahead of Vodafone and launched cross operator to demonstrate their latest theme of “Data enabled differentiated Network” which is airing across TVC and print media.
The attached payment mechanism and known efficient execution of Bharti Airtel in launching any product raises the viability of OTT players like Hungama, Saavn or Gaana as they rely on Advertisement revenue. It is pretty clear that these players will have tough time to promote their promote on Airtel network and subsequently on other network as competitor will be launching similar product in no time. It’s always been discussed about the content acquisition cost and subsequent ownership of the content but the move by Bharti Airtel made it pretty clear that it’s not far that Mobile Operator will be procuring content directly.
Now, it will be extremely interesting to see the follow up action by competitor and repositioning move by OTT players to mitigate direct threat to them
