Indian Mobile / Wired Data Growth is a focus for many including Google – and not just the traditional telecom operators as is evident from Google’s India centric advertisement in November which has gone viral (4mn views in six days). Based on Various reports, we think that Google is working on the following key 5 strategic Areas for Growth in the World’s Second largest Internet / Mobile Market.
How Google is Planning to Address Mobile Internet Users in India ? Like India logged on to the Telecom revolution with 2G GSM bypassing the TDMA, when it comes to the Internet most users are online using their Mobile Handsets / Tablets. Google is rolling out handwriting support in local language for its services such as search, e-mail and documents – i.e. allowing users to write out words by use of mouse or by means of touch for smart devices. Handwriting support for Hindi has just been released and could be expanded to support other local languages. Google also believes this could aid in increasing user-developed content in the country.
Affordable SmartPhone & Connectivity Like other Telecom Operators, Google believes an INR 5,000 price point as the level that could increase wider smartphone adoption in the country. We understand that the company is working with several local handset makers on this front to initially launch smartphones in the range of USD150, and
eventually make phones at the sub-USD100 level. Recently, Google also unveiled a low-end smartphone Moto G through subsidiary device maker Motorola at a price point of USD179.
Social and YouTube Focus Areas in India Google also notes that 38% of its YouTube users in India access the site via mobile. Improving its You Tube content is a key priority and notes that recent IPL cricket matches
were streamed live on YouTube. YouTube also has 10k Indian full length movies and 95% of Indian music catalogue is now available as per the company.
The Google+ user base in India is mere 12mn, we understand, similar to LinkedIn/Twitter user base, but Facebook is still way ahead in this market with 115mn users. One of our analysts being into building SaaS Products for SMEs he firmly believes that Google+ will have a high resistance for adoption in India due the difficulty in understanding the interface compared to Facebook.
Enterprise and cloud – with around 8mn SMEs (end of 2012) in the country, but only 200k having access to packaged software, as per the company, it also believes cloud/enterprise is an area of opportunity. We note this is an area of focus for integrated telcos too, and we also see partnerships between telcos and enterprise software providers across the region and this could be the case in India too.