Author Archives: jkneeland
Opera: India has the lowest percentage of females using mobile web
Review: According to Opera’s data, a mere 4% of mobile web users in India are female (and the country with the most female users may surprise you). Regardless of the reasons why, this disparity represents an enormous opportunity Continue reading
Smartphones to make up more than half of Asia’s phone sales by 2015
Review: Driving the cost of smartphones down, and carrier revenues up, but ignoring the feature phone market would be premature to say the least Continue reading
Tata Consultancy Services working to turn its mKRISHI agricultural info service into a global entrepreneurial platform
courtesy TCS
For the last few years Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), the IT consulting division of India’s mammoth Tata Group, has been developing a set of interconnecting technologies to help India’s rural farmers, all under the banner of mKRISHI (the ‘m’ is for mobile while “krishi” means farming in many Indian languages).
The mKRISHI system is a [...]
HTC betting on smartphone growth in India
Review: The Indian launch of the HTC Desire is only beginning. Anticipating big gains, HTC is investing in its Indian retail presence Continue reading
Challenges are mobile opportunities: GoMo News Interviews Kazi Islam of Grameenphone
GoMo News recently had the opportunity to meet innovative and exciting movers and shakers at the MLove conference in Berlin. One of the most notable in a sea of notables was the keynote speaker, Mr. Kazi Islam, CEO of Grameenphone IT. Until recently, Grameenphone IT was an internal division of Grameenphone, Bangladesh’s largest mobile phone company, whose innovations in using mobile phones to improve the lives of Bangladeshis have won praise and awards from around the globe. Continue reading
India Announces Mobile Number Portability by 31 October
Review: Mark your calendars for the Indian mobile market apocalypse as number portability and 3G both arrive right on top of each other Continue reading
Nokia goes for 100% household mobile penetration in 5 Indian villages in a bid to promote its rural VAS offerings
Review: Nokia kicks off its 15th year in India by giving Nokia phones—and Nokia VAS—to villages in what is part self-promotion, part larger strategic promotion of its rural-centric VAS Continue reading
Vodafone India Intros Solar-Powered Handset
Review: Interesting but not actually the first solar-powered phone in India. What’s interesting is the emerging strategic possibility that Vodafone may be looking to differentiate themselves (and capture more wallet-share) with phone hardware Continue reading
India to get iPhone 4 in October
Review: Frustratingly behind other major markets, but a marked improvement over India’s 9-month wait for the 3GS. Still, don’t expect many takers in the world’s most price-sensitive phone market Continue reading
The best phones you’ve never heard of: India becoming a hotbed of new handset manufacturers
Review: Relative lack of established brand loyalty, extreme price sensitivity, and rapid growth have made an opening for new entrants to the mobile phone business. India might become a launch pad for these new companies to scale and break into the Western markets. Continue reading
India’s MTNL Drastically Cuts International Long Distance Fees
Review: MTNL gambles one of the industry’s last high-margin services on shifting international calls from to high-volume low-margin Continue reading
IMImobile launches “Cell Shakti” VAS to Empower Rural Indians
Review: The latest salvo in the rural Indian battlefield between handset makers and service providers to own the customer
VAS provider IMImobile has teamed up with Airtel to introduce Cell Shakti (shakti roughly means “power”), a service that caters to the needs of rural Indians who have long suffered from poor access to infrastructure, education and information.
Tata Future Group Launch Another Mobile Carrier; Goal to Make Mobile Service “Virtually Free”
Review: Another day, another new Indian mobile operator. But this one has a novel idea Continue reading
Mobile India: Airtel Introduces Voice-Blogs
Review: “Twitter with voices” another example of India’s competitive advantage in creating voice-based VAS for the developing world and its own enormous customer base Continue reading
