In investing, it pays to separate the signal
from the noise. At a time when the media is
full of budget-related hype, it may be
rewarding to look at some of the longer term
trends out there. One such trend is in the
mobile telephony and Internet access space.
Let us look at some of the facts and try to
gain some perspective from them.
• Incumbent mobile phone companies are
looking at 2G and 3G data as the next drivers
for revenue generation.
• Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd has announced
a Rs.70,000 crore investment plan for 4G
Internet services.
• Google Inc. has announced the launch of
smartphones called Android One in
partnership with manufacturers where the
cost will be less than Rs.6,000.
• Prime Minister Narendra Modi has plans to
create a broadband highway.
• Rajan Anandan of Google India mentioned
that Flipkart sells more electronics than all
the Croma stores pan-India put together.
• A journalist with a business daily when
questioned about the shrinking stock market
pages in the daily replied to me, “Who checks
stock prices in the newspapers anyway?”
• IRCTC, or Indian Railway Catering and
Tourism Corporation Ltd , is the biggest e-
commerce site in the Asia-Pacific region. It
transacted revenue of Rs.9,498 crore in
2011-12 and the number of tickets sold that
year were 1.16 billion. The numbers would
have only grown since then.
• This blog post itself will appear online. The
readership of this post will depend upon
whether it is interesting enough to spark
sharing and comments on social media. It will
not appear in print at all.
• The Web is no longer about English. One can
use a variety of Indian languages on sites and
apps like Facebook , Twitter and Whatsapp.
These facts have serious implications for
investors. One has to just look at what has
happened in the Western world to understand
the implications.
• Media will see dramatic changes.
Newspapers may see an increasing proportion
of readership coming online as compared to
the print medium.
• Advertising will change dramatically. Job ads
could move to job portals, ditto with
matrimonial ads. Classifieds could move to
sites such as Olx, Quikr and others.
Newspapers will have to learn to live with
lower print advertising.
• FM radio could be under threat. The new
radio is an app on the phone which streams
customized music, and not an FM channel.
We already have plenty of these—Savnn and
Hungama being examples.
• With set-top boxes providing recording
facility, live television viewing could get
restricted to news and sports categories.
Television serials and movies will increasingly
get recorded and viewed later. A corollary is
that ads will be skipped and not watched.
People may also stream these programmes
over the Internet rather than watch it
through the cable or DTH provider.
• The big battle between kirana and
traditional shops on one end and modern,
organized retailers at the other end will get
more intense with the entry of a third
segment, namely e-commerce players.
• Credit and debit card usage and business
volumes of logistics companies will see a
huge upswing.
So, stay tuned for interesting times! http://www.livemint.com/Opinion/XCMIbTfN5s5g2EIJqPhjQO/The-world-of-mobile-Internet-for-investors.html
from the noise. At a time when the media is
full of budget-related hype, it may be
rewarding to look at some of the longer term
trends out there. One such trend is in the
mobile telephony and Internet access space.
Let us look at some of the facts and try to
gain some perspective from them.
• Incumbent mobile phone companies are
looking at 2G and 3G data as the next drivers
for revenue generation.
• Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd has announced
a Rs.70,000 crore investment plan for 4G
Internet services.
• Google Inc. has announced the launch of
smartphones called Android One in
partnership with manufacturers where the
cost will be less than Rs.6,000.
• Prime Minister Narendra Modi has plans to
create a broadband highway.
• Rajan Anandan of Google India mentioned
that Flipkart sells more electronics than all
the Croma stores pan-India put together.
• A journalist with a business daily when
questioned about the shrinking stock market
pages in the daily replied to me, “Who checks
stock prices in the newspapers anyway?”
• IRCTC, or Indian Railway Catering and
Tourism Corporation Ltd , is the biggest e-
commerce site in the Asia-Pacific region. It
transacted revenue of Rs.9,498 crore in
2011-12 and the number of tickets sold that
year were 1.16 billion. The numbers would
have only grown since then.
• This blog post itself will appear online. The
readership of this post will depend upon
whether it is interesting enough to spark
sharing and comments on social media. It will
not appear in print at all.
• The Web is no longer about English. One can
use a variety of Indian languages on sites and
apps like Facebook , Twitter and Whatsapp.
These facts have serious implications for
investors. One has to just look at what has
happened in the Western world to understand
the implications.
• Media will see dramatic changes.
Newspapers may see an increasing proportion
of readership coming online as compared to
the print medium.
• Advertising will change dramatically. Job ads
could move to job portals, ditto with
matrimonial ads. Classifieds could move to
sites such as Olx, Quikr and others.
Newspapers will have to learn to live with
lower print advertising.
• FM radio could be under threat. The new
radio is an app on the phone which streams
customized music, and not an FM channel.
We already have plenty of these—Savnn and
Hungama being examples.
• With set-top boxes providing recording
facility, live television viewing could get
restricted to news and sports categories.
Television serials and movies will increasingly
get recorded and viewed later. A corollary is
that ads will be skipped and not watched.
People may also stream these programmes
over the Internet rather than watch it
through the cable or DTH provider.
• The big battle between kirana and
traditional shops on one end and modern,
organized retailers at the other end will get
more intense with the entry of a third
segment, namely e-commerce players.
• Credit and debit card usage and business
volumes of logistics companies will see a
huge upswing.
So, stay tuned for interesting times! http://www.livemint.com/Opinion/XCMIbTfN5s5g2EIJqPhjQO/The-world-of-mobile-Internet-for-investors.html
