Mobile VAS industry will expand beyond voice and phone: VAS 2011

“It is a huge opportunity as the market for value added services is set to expand beyond voice and phone, from entertainment to utilities and services” said Jason Stirling, senior vice-president, Asia Pacific, Nuance Communications speaking at the VAS 2011 conference. "This would bring  scalable, cost effective secure ways to deploy VAS to masses especially in rural areas to change their lives," he further added.

Citing the rapid growth in the telecom industry, the experts talked about various possibilities that Mobile Value Added Services can further boost this trend. Sandip Biswas, director of Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu India suggested focus on M-Commerce, M-Law, M-Governance, M-agriculture and M-education as the areas to develop value added services in mobile phone.

On the other hand Rahul Saighal, chief marketing officer, Aircel, felt developing “exciting applications” was the key. Concurring with Saighal, Jason Stirling felt that that there was a need for application developers to develop apps that bring entertainment, education, healthcare and financial services to people.

The central theme of the conference was thinking about creating value for people. Predicting smartphone penetration to rise from 5.2 per cent of the mobile subscription base to 14 per cent by 2014, telecom experts  felt that that mobile smart phone would soon become a platform for providing a level playing field for people from different socio-economic communities. 

According to experts, the 3G, 4G enabled mobile would be changing life style of the people - by connecting them to government authorities, assisting in shopping, monitoring healthcare as well providing information regarding education on the go.

We are aware that Indian telecom industry is growing at a rapid pace. According to a study by global consultancy firm Deloitte, Mobile Value Added Services are expected to be USD 4 billion industry within the next two years. It therefore does not come as a surprise that Mobile VAS  which so far is concentrated across music and content like wallpapers, themes, ringtones and SMS based services like news, updates will extend and expand in the coming years.

In fact with more and more android equipped mobile handsets  making their way to a whole range of mobile users there is a huge opportunity for Mobile VAS to reach out to a new consumer base with their offerings.