Tapping into mobile’s massive growth potential

By Cassandra Mascarenhas

The biggest mobile forum in the region, the South Asian Mobile Conference was held for the third year in Colombo earlier this week, bringing together some of the world’s top experts in the mobile sphere, developers of the next generation, researchers, academics and policy makers, creating a platform for a chance of interaction.

Hosted by the ICT Agency of Sri Lanka, the conference aimed to stimulate new thinking and vision for the future, to create awareness on current trends, business opportunities and models in mobile content and application development, to share experiences on developing and deploying mobile applications for the wider society and to create awareness on policies affecting mobile telecommunication in the South Asian region.

When mobile met advertising

The conference commenced with the keynote address delivered by the renowned author, consultant and motivational speaker Tomi Ahonen, who via his presentation shared many examples from all across the world on how the global mobile advertising revolution has arrived.

An interesting fact that he shared from a study conducted by Deloitte’s revealed that during 2012, the $100 smartphone segment will collectively sell 300 million units worldwide. However, he added that the price of smartphones needs to come down even further and although that will not happen this year, noted that it will happen in time.

“Don’t put all your money in apps. SMS is still priority number one for some of the world’s largest advertisers. Don’t forget voice calls in the emerging world. Robi, the operator in Bangladesh, offers a promotion called golden call through which random people in the network gets a call from a celebrity and wins big prizes,” he shared.

Any super phone of today according to Moore’s law at the end of this decade will cost $10 to make, he explained. If 41 per cent of all smartphones cost $100 today, by next year maybe 30 per cent will cost $50to $60 and that way at the end of the decade it will cost $10 but by then we will have much more advanced phones.

When money met advertising – it was a match made in heaven, said Ahonen. Visa was the first to eliminate the need for cash and it is now a race – which country will be the first to eliminate cash? Turkey has announced a target date of 2025 to eliminate coins and bank notes.

“The first virtual credit card for mobile via SMS was launched through the collaborative efforts of MasterCard, Airtel and Standard Chartered launched in Kenya and it is to be rolled across Airtel Africa’s footprint. Anyone who needs MasterCard payments can do so via SMS. This is the future and this is why Google says that their number two priority is mobile money. SL has made the right decisions so far – you can take this step next,” he suggested.  

Billions reach for content

Etisalat Lanka CEO Dumindra Ratnayaka kicking off the first technical session of the forum spoke on content – the big driver of mobile revenue, stating in his opening remarks that content is the way forward.

While admitting that the traditional content SMS, ringtones, WAP content and other familiar mediums are still an excellent platform and are a solid revenue base, he stressed on the importance of moving beyond that.

“In a market like Sri Lanka, you need to grow your revenues not hold your revenues. This new revenue will come from mobile apps. Smartphones are here and they give people the opportunities to use apps. The ‘isyndrome’ is not just a strategy, mobile apps become a strategy when you know how to monetise it.  There are a lot of interesting things you can do with augmented reality but there is so much more to do before we get there,” he said.

Microimage Founder and CEO Harsha Purasinghe delivered a brief rundown of the emergence of the smartphone. Going back to 2003, which was when Microimage entered the mobile space, he said that he has seen the whole ecosystem change since then with the emergence of the smartphone.

“The ecosystem in the feature phone era was a highly fragmented space and it was a very frustrating time for developers. It was impossible to take your app global in that era because we didn’t have content aggregators in the market at the time. This all changed with the isyndrome – with Steve Jobs and the iPhone – it really shook up the world. They offered a single portal for developers to submit, price and certify and target their apps which was a real breakthrough for developers with the app store,” he said.

What was even more groundbreaking about this venture was that 70 per cent revenue given to the developer. What Apple started was taken mass market by Google. The fact that it was open source, supported multiple vendors, had device variety and had price points to suit needs saw the rapid innovation of the platform.

“This is the platform which will take the smartphone to the common man. The potential is enormous. The smartphone app user experience is far better and powerful and can really revolutionise emerging markets. SMS news is another popular app. ‘Bhasha Puwath,’ an android app which allows you to read news in the vernacular you are comfortable with which was developed by a Moratuwa university student is an example of the potential of apps and this student has now gone on to start up his own company,” Purasinghe stated.

Speaking on mobile in the grassroot level was Digital Empowerment Foundation India Director Osama Manzar, who explored the possibilities mobile opened up for the masses and for social good. He pointed out that communication was almost completely oral amongst illiterate rural folk and shared some examples of how innovatively they use mobile.

 “You will find that there are more innovations occurring at a grassroot level rather than widespread adoption. For instance, there is an entire ‘missed call economy’ in India – families manage their entire day with just missed calls to family members. Anna Hazare’s anti-corruption movement was fully supported through missed calls. Supporters were asked to give missed calls to a certain number which pledged their support to him and the movement became so strong through this that there has now been a bill delivered in the Indian parliament,” he revealed.

Mobile commerce

Following a quick break for lunch, during the third technical session of the conference titled ‘Business, markets and strategies,’ moderated by Tomi Ahonen, Dialog Axiata PLC Group CEO Dr. Hans Wijayasuriya delivered a presentation on sustainable mobile commerce eco-systems in emerging markets.

The mobile is clearly an unparalleled platform for information exchange, he said, noting that there is no debate over that with five billion subscribers outstripping television by three times.

“91 per cent of us keep our mobile within our perimeter movement. We look at our mobile once every 6.5 minutes and this reflects the immediacy of the mobile phone, what we see and how we interact on a day-to-day basis. However, we in the mobile industry have to recognise that the television and newspaper dominate the money behind commerce but mobile, being an omnipresent and pervasive device, has the potential to drive commerce,” he expressed strongly.

Mobile is active and intelligent, with a multimodal interface and furthermore is inclusive and empowering. Wijayasuriya stated that when talking of emerging markets, it’s important to look at the power of mobile to digitally empower people in all emerging countries as the mobile phone is a powerful tool which scales across the economic pyramid and brings to the palm of a citizen an online connectivity device capable of delivering cross-sector inclusion.

Inclusive commerce, which ideally means that everyone in a country can trade and talk money, can use mobile as a digital bridge in order to make commerce more inclusive and thereby create a more equal world.

“In our countries mobile penetration far exceeds fixed line penetration but mobile commerce has not delivered to its full potential. With such a powerful tool in our hands, we have been unable to turn the curve in terms of mobile commerce. Similarly, the mobile share of ads is 0.7 per cent even in the developed world. We talk a lot about the mobile but we haven’t done a good job in converting this phenomenal potential. Commerce creates money and business cases which build around this money for developers, content providers and other parties in the ecosystem for the wheel to turn,” he pointed out.  

Wijayasuriya went on to say that the mobile industry is one with massive growth potential – almost a 100 time more than what it currently is. South Asian countries, he added, have a phenomenal opportunity to go where the developed world has not.

The mobile share of advertising is expected to grow to 5.7 per cent in 2015 in Malaysia and Indonesia and to higher levels in South Asia but Wijayasuriya felt that there can be greater growth.

“We have to take this knowledge with the fact that we have undercapitalised the potential of the mobile device as a single internet device that a majority of the people in our countries have. Going forward, e-commerce and mobile commerce will converge with smartphones,” he predicted.

The mobile is a far more powerful too because it is readily available, applicable to the lives of a lot of people, the level of affinity is very high and is affordable and therefore mobile in its primary form is very strong. He also noted that the distinct duality in customers is another factor to take into account – the high end customer segment and the growing and rapidly expanding middle and bottom of the pyramid that forms the mass market.

Pix by Indraratne Balasuriya