The 25 crore challenge

India now has more than 25 crore mobile phone subscribers. Operators will now

have new opportunities as well as challenges as and when the market grows. Such

a large number of users also means that we have lakhs of people who are part of

a mobile workforce in large, medium and small organizations, ranging from banks

to courier companies to hospitals to steel manufacturing to insurance agents.

These people will want more and more features in their mobile phones; which

offer solutions that will empower them even on the move.

To look at things differently, these 25 crore mobile users are also consumers

of various products and services who can now be tapped irrespective of time,

distance and location. Marketing and sales heads of every possible product and

service are very clear that they would like to use the mobile phone to reach

these potential customers.

Therefore, as more feature-rich handsets will be needed in the market, the

big challenge before vendors will be to make handsets even more easy to use.

At a time when there is a plethora of handsets available in the market, users

will find purchase decisions even tougher. The channel partners therefore will

have to keep an eye on the future technology, and also make sure that their

sales people are geared up with adequate product knowledge to sell these

handsets.

Ibrahim Ahmad

We have reached 25 crore, which also means that the next phase of mobile

growth and explosion will now happen beyond the metros and the big cities and

towns. This market is more price-conscious and will most probably look for

cheaper handsets and tariff plans. Therefore, the operators as well as handset

vendors will have to come out with solutions that will be readily acceptable in

the market. Plus they will require channels to reach out to the consumers in

these markets.

The next phase of telecom growth will be a very interesting period. There

willbe lots of opportunity to grow, and operators, handset vendors and channels

willneed to work more closely to get the best out of it.