Why did Iphone partner with Aircel in India?

Surprised to see a brand like Iphone tying up with a third grade brand like Aircel in India. Iphone is bound to lose a lot because of this blunder it committed in India. While it choose wisely in having alliance with Airtel, Vodafone or Tata Docomo could have been a better bet than Aircel.

Aircel is the brand of masses in which ever market it is leading and recently, it is found that it is a scam ridden company which bribed Mr Maran to get the license dead cheaply from its erstwhile owner. Ironically, Aircel has the habit of dumping its distributors and dealers in its newer markets where it is struggling for survival and finding it real tough to have partners to sell Start Up Kits (SUK) or new connections. One would not be surprised to find a recharge outlet miles away or limited to the bigger outlets who sell more mobile connections. With such poor network of retailers, how will it be able to sell big numbers?

Aircel, though the leader in Chennai and Rest of Tamilnadu circles (as of now, which is going to lose its sheen sooner than later) has very less ARPU and Gross revenues when compared to other operators. This is where Iphone will lose its value. Will it sell the phone to some one who uses a phone to make a missed call expecting the other side to call back? Or to some one who looks for Chinese handsets or Micromax?

Iphone will very soon realise the mistake and hopefully not repeat the mistake elsewhere...  but it will be sorry for losing out on a rapidly growing Indian market. Nonetheless, Iphone as such will not lose its customers. People using other networks will buy it in the open market and still be its customers.

Egoistic politicians kill India's future

Egoistic attitide in political leaders in India is killing its prospects of becoming a much civilised country quickly. The very politicians who intended to have a bill including the Prime Minister in Lokpal bill are now opposed to it as they want to show their might. They want to prove that the members of parliament are above all and are some judges and licensed to kill the constitution.

These foolish and mostly uneducated goons are not aware that Anna Hazare is not a hero by himself but made one by the frustrated citizens of India. Any one with good image who tried to speak out against corruption would have become a hero during this period of scams rocking the country. It so happened that he came forward to fight against it. Even the Government or the intelligence or the media was aware that Anna Hazare would get such over whelming response. Had the Government had a slightest clue, it would have used its muscle to book some non-bailable case against Anna Hazare and locked him up even before he attempted to fight against corruption. Now that he was made an icon by the people of India, the Government is finding it tough to book a false case against him or do any kind of mud slinging business.

The intelligence department might have burnt its mid night oil by now to find if he committed a slightest mistake in life and cook a story around it and malign the image of Anna Hazare. Unfortunately, he did not give it a chance. They still tried to malign the image of the civic representatives team members but the people were in no mood to listen to them and it bounced back so they were forced to stop the mud slinging business.

These fools are not understanding that these very people's children might be the victims of the mistakes they are committing today. Some day, their kids who are future politicians, would walk in their foot steps and loot the Government's money and abuse the power and the people who will lose their patience would definitely make a much more stringent and undemocratic and more of a dictatorial Lokpal bill and give captive punishment to the politicians and bureaucrats who are corrupt. They will then feel sorry for the fate of their children when they both meet in hell.

Much hyped Google+ is it a + or -?

Google always creates hype in whatever it does and it restricts invites to show more anxiety among the users and finally fades away. This is the history as of now for Google.

Will the history repeat in case of Google + too or will it really take on Facebook and give the essential part of  revenue from social networking which is becoming the flavor of the sellers. While Google is an undoubted leader and no sight of any competition coming near to it in search, Google is doing to Facebook now what Yahoo and Bing tried to do with Google to gain market share in search engine once and failed drastically.

Google is now the synonym for search engine as Facebook is for social networking. Neither Google nor Facebook gave any room to their users for complaint while continuously living up to the needs and fancies of the net users. Facebook never attempted to foray into another's space and invade their market while cash rich companies like MSN burnt its fingers with Wallop and Google trying its best with Orkut and failing. Infact, Orkut was better than what it is after being acquired by Google. Google's yet another failed attempt is Buzz where it tried to take on Twitter. Google Wave is another unfinished job which is very uncertain.

The best part would be to leverage on ones own strengths and to stop invading others space and instead of focus on some thing new and unique which grabs the users attention and not try some thing old and successful for Google.

Much hyped 3G services a big failure

Telecom companies bet very big on 3G services in India and competed heavily with each other to get licenses. The bid amount was so high that not a single operator managed to get pan India license. The excitement shown in obtaining the licenses is not equally present when it came to rolling out the services. Market leader Airtel spent millions of Rupees promoting 3G but failed drastically in cashing on 3G reason - there is not enough market for 3G services at the moment.

India is not yet ready to use 3G. Unlike developed countries, people in India are not still addicted to 3G the way they are addicted to mobile phones. Today a person in India can live without data connectivity on his/her phone but will be handicapped without a mobile phone. Though urban India is catching up staying connected through internet its not the case with tier 2 cities and rural India.

The reason for the failure in utilizing the 3G services by Indian telecom subscribers is because of the huge input costs for gadgets supporting 3G services. Iphone costs Rs 40000 in India which is not even an years salary for more than 50% of the country's population. People in India still feel Kindle as a luxury. Unlike the rest of the world, print media is growing in India. I am not trying to confuse by bringing in print media into the topic of 3G. 3G services are meant for data connectivity and when it comes to data connectivity, it is the information flow be it accessing web sites or news and events. More than 99% in India still rely on desktop internet or television or print media for getting the information they need.

For 3G services to catch up, the internet should be within the reach of all the people in all the regions be it rural India or the urban India. Once people are addicted to internet, they will look at portable means of accessing the data. i.e through the latest generation phones like Iphone. Not even 50% of the people who use Iphone use data services in India. People who use Blackberry phones are mostly confined to the email services and hardly use the data services. With such minimal use of data services on gadgets or high end phones, it would be meaningless for the telecom operators to expect big revenues or users for its 3G services at the moment.

Though 3G could take up some day, only some miracle should happen to bring big boost to the 3G users in India. The entry of Relience Industries through Infotel could drastically add data users to Indian market and might also bring in users for its 3G services. As of now, the telecom companies which minted money through  voice services will find it tough to break even on 3G services.

The fall of Uninor

Telecom industry in India is growing and there's no stopping at the moment. What could be the reason for a common man running from pillar to post for getting a telephone connection to the same man getting choices to choose from multiple operators at affordable rates?

Changing the telecom licensing from fixed license fees to revenue share model brought the rates down drastically and people (only the upper middle class and few portion of middle class) started tasting telephones and getting the benefits of staying connected. There was a feeling that the growth of telecom has become slow and it would take a long period for the telecom operators to break even. This was the situation prevailing pre launch of reliance communications.

When the biggest gambler Mukesh Ambani entered the telecom sector with Reliance, they had high expectations of selling millions of phones and had agreements with leading mobile manufacturers including LG, Samsung and Nokia. When its launch became a flop, they sold mobile phones like vegetables in the market and every one including the poor who does not have a roof to stay at nights or during rain has a mobile phone in his/her hand. The slogan "Dhirubhai ka sapna har ghar mein ho mobile apna" - Dhirubhai's dream to have an own mobile in every ones home became true in a mad rush to dispose off the heaps of mobile handsets committed to the mobile manufacturers by Reliance Communications.

Every one in India irrespective of the earning power tasted the power of being connected because of Reliance Communications and the telecom industry took the biggest leap and never turned back since then...

If we look at the series of events, the credit goes to all and it goes to none.

With the Ex minister for Telecom Mr A Raja's wish to have his favorites in the telecom industry, new players like Uninor, Swan entered the market and existing cheap and small time player Aircel became a national operator.

Uninor had highly intelligent people at its helm and entered the market with very high ambitions and slipped off in the very first month. They missed the simple logic that "when in Rome be a Roman"!
Few mistakes to mention are...
They felt that they should reach the customers directly without any retailers in between with the help of Kiosks to recharge the existing mobile numbers!
Would spending millions be a viable option or having retailers whom the telecom operators dictate terms and rides on them be a better option?

Deducting Rs 2 per day for the plan the customer chooses is an unwanted measure and without that clause, Uninor would have been a bigger hit than Docomo.