Mobile Media is a red-HOT marketing opportunity which Marketers CANNOT afford to miss out on

Mobile entered India way back in 1995 and has since then achieved huge penetration. Roughly 50% of India's 1Billion+ population use mobile phones. The majority of the market (approx 92%) use prepaid connections whilst the rest use post paid connections. Mobile has an 85% penetration in urban India as opposed to a 30% penetration in rural India. Mobile phones which were once considered a status symbol have now become extremely mainstream so much so that everyone has one be it a maid-servant, auto-rikshaw/taxi driver, a panwala or a fruit/vegetable/fish seller.

Here are some interesting stats about key Telecom Players and their user base (COAI)
1.Airtel - 118.86mn
2.Reliance - 90mn
3.Vodafone - 91.4mn
4.BSNL -58.7mn
5.Idea - 57mn
6.Tata group - 58mn (Tata Indicom, Tata Docomo, Virgin Mobile)
7.Aircel - 31mn
8.MTNL -4.5mn
9.Loop - 2.6mn
10.Uninor - 1.2mn
11.MTS - 1.7mn

Here are some interesting stats on mobile usage:

1.SMS is the hottest app with 180 billion SMS projected to be sent by 2010.
2.SMS revenue is projected to reach $1.3billion (USD) by June 2010 and accounts for 37% of VAS revenue
3.Hello tunes or CRBT (Caller Ring Back Tunes) account for 40% of VAS revenue and are projected to touch $1.46billion (USD) by June 2010
4.Contest participation SMS accounts for 16% of VAS revenue and is projected to touch $587.3mn (USD) by June 2010
5.Mobile Gaming accounts for roughly 5% of VAS revenue and is projected to touch $183.55mn (USD) by June 2010

Some interesting innovations possible on mobile:

1.Name SMS – where a person receives an SMS with his/her name in the SMS making the SMS extremely personalized as well as resulting in a clutter-breaking innovation
2.Interactive Voice call – a person receives a call on his/her phone, answers the call and listens to a pre-recorded voice message ( powered by an IVRS) which the receiver can interact with by making selections on hearing prompts. These actions can be recorded and assist in lead generation for companies who are looking at creating a database of consumers who they want to engage with on an ongoing basis
3.Hello Tunes – since the average person receives 10 calls a day, the number of brand interactions that can be powered by just engaging 1 person is 300/month. This makes for an exciting opportunity to exploit from the perspective of consumer engagement where consumers may be exposed to brand audio-mnemonics/jingles to boost brand recall and aid Top of Mind Awareness Levels (TOMAL).
4.100% accurate targeting makes mobile a red-HOT media since marketers can target audience basis Age, Income, Sex, Location and sometimes even profession.

Source:
•http://www.cellular-news.com/story/39758.php
•http://coai.in/statistics.php?val=2009
•http://auspi.in/show-subscribber.asp
•http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/ew/2007/05/07/stories/2007050700120200.htm
•http://www.iamai.in/Upload/Research/mobilevasinindia_25.pdf