Why Bharti Airtel Should Enter Into Smartphone Segment

It's an irony of the ecosystem that the company who changed the Indian telephony system with their innovative base telephony devices. Mr. Sunil Bharti Mittal vision, predictions and insight about Indian Telecom sector never went wrong. Bharti Enterprise at one point of time through their base telephony device in the Indian market forced global player like Panasonic to Sony to look for cover.

Post mobility revolution, organization moved their focus more on the services side while forging market disruptive methodology of hardware attached revenue share which is now the trend of the industry. In the last 23 plus years, Bharti Airtel positioned itself as de-facto brand in Indian geography while entered into Africa. Many are predicting the potential failure in African Market in coming years but I differ completely with Critique and will come back with reference based article very soon.

The rush for use acquisition post new service provider in India during last 8 years helped Airtel to consolidate its competitiveness and enhanced its workforce determination to weather any threat to their business be it pricing to performance.

I truly admire Mr. Sunil open admission about Reliance Jio entry and its implication on the pricing as he is also predicting Reliance Jio play which I mentioned in my previous article about the reliance jio. Reliance Jio is getting aggressive in their push to capture the device market with an intention to create an ecosystem but again as I pointed out in my previous article's is reliance jio betting to be google of India that Reliance Jio must learn from the failure of Reliance Communications.

In my point of view,  Bharti Airtel should turn the tide towards the Competitor by launching their own device supported with their multiple application such as Airtel Wync Music, Wync Movies, Wync Games for which they are spending user acquisition $. It will again a disruptive move by Bharti Airtel an how

The Management & Promoters understand the manufacturing to distribution market basis their background.

Many ex- Distributor's of their basic telephony system is now the owner of Smartphone companies and it may help them to acquire some of the struggling domestic companies with their facility and rebrand the Device with Quality.

Bharti Airtel Userbase is more than 225 Million and more than 70 Million user on their network are active Smartphone user's using data.

The Total market size of Indian Smartphone will hover around 95 Million to 105 Million during FY 17

The one of biggest beneficiary of MNP ( Mobile Number Portability )

The lowest Churn rate in Telecom Industry

Wide reach of Bharti Airtel Store is in place

The above mentioned points are some of the pointer which Bharti Airtel may consider to turn the tide as device manufacturer works with a margin of 3 to 4 on net level and generate maximum revenue from VAS revenue. The net profit margin of 7 to 8 % can easily be reached given their strongly coupled services, platform and Application layer. I won't be surprised if it comes sooner than later.

Regulatory Move On Domain Centric Security – Perquisite Of BYOD Adoption In India

The dynamic nature of mobility space in last few years created lots of buzz. At one end, the unimaginable surge of Apple promoted iOS mobile operating system (OS) based mobile device, Google promoted Android mobile operating centric devices whereas on the other end the demise of Motorola, Nokia device business sellout, Blackberry problems. The dynamic changes in the mobile operating system attached device ecosystem offered Enterprises new opportunity to opt for newer mobile OS powered packed with innovative feature set to access corporate data. The adoption of iOS and Android mobile OS based devices by Enterprise also brought another frontier to play with transition from Blackberry ecosystem as well as opportunities for innovative companies to come up with new products, services or Applications around new ecosystem.

India experienced unprecedented adoption of Android mobile operating system based device adoption and captured defunct Symbian operating system space which used to be dominating the marketplace. The open source Android mobile OS attracted many domestic device players into ring which propelled adoption by increasing efficient manufacturing and delivery mechanism. The rise in low cost Smartphone also attracted Android Application ecosystem players to offer both horizontal and vertical application targeted towards consumer and prosumer’s.

The iOS mobile OS attached Apple device also gained traction in India with adoption of subsidy route by most of the service provider to tap in high net worth Indian mobile users as post paid user to increase their ARPU. Blackberry BB10 mobile OS lost market share in India but still regarded as first priority choice it comes to Enterprise prosumer’s. Enterprise prosumer’s adoption levels are also changing and they want to have single device which fulfill both consumer and prosumer centric requirements.

Post Mobile Value Added Service regulation enforcement by Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), mobile VAS providers are required to take mobile subscriber authorization before pushing any paid applications or product or service. The mechanism of double consent impacted mobile VAS ecosystem players and the monthly activation of mobile VAS went down in high double digit month over month. It is also expected that the legacy mobile VAS service would experience further erosion in user adoption and subsequently revenue fall.

The disruption in legacy mobile VAS service and focus in data centric service by mobile service providers attracted many new and existing mobile VAS developers. The low entry barrier for new Smartphone users, content portability by Enterprise for mobile ecosystem, plug and transfer mechanism of mobility ecosystem pushing Enterprise Mobility ecosystem in new horizon. Most of the Enterprises are contemplating to offer their internal and external clients mechanism to access product portfolio, tracking, product feedback and mechanism to capture new business opportunities. The major problem attached with low adoption of Enterprise mobility in India is nothing but content digitization, interoperability, portability, availability, reachability, scalability and security.

Recent regulatory as well as IT department initiative on Cyber security, Malware free Network equipment, Equipment hosting, Lawful intercept is going to have major positives for many Enterprise to adopt enterprises application on multiple OS supported devices. The malware free network equipment is going to filter unwarranted malware used to spoof user information and lead to hacking. The mobile security at device level is going to develop internal filtrations to keep the device free from any eavesdropping and in-turn remove the possibility of being used as mobility device Botnet by hacker to launch( denial of service) DoS, ( Distributed denial of service) DDoS and many other attacks on Enterprise servers. The lawful intercept regulation is going to offer Enterprise to have more confidence on Lawful agency to take care of any misuse of Enterprise assets for any unlawful activities. The stringent security regulatory guideline around BFSI sector possess new opportunity for BYOD adoption as mobile commerce, banking are on the rise. The enablement of security regulation to mitigate any adware, malware and phishing attack would open more BYOD user’s adoption of new horizontal and vertical application. It would also give higher level of confidence to Enterprise segment to connect their database with device hosted applications to enable user, employee and partner to retrieve, update centralized information management system real-time.

The servers including database hosting requirements as well as support regulation defined by government regulator where application providers are bound to keep mobile user information within Indian Territory. The implementation of above mentioned compliance will enable Service Providers to have higher visibility on data protection, transit, interoperability, portability; SLA which is going ease out stringent process to get BYOD registered with Enterprise owned IT infrastructure. Blackberry initiative to support cross mobile OS applications would act as change catalyst for higher adoption of Enterprise mobility. One can only hope that Indian BYOD adoption is going to witness exponential growth post adoption of above mentioned regulatory enforcement. It is going to hurt ecosystem players financially to comply with regulatory guideline but it also carries multiple cascading positives.