The last statistic I read about India, in the Autumn of last year, indicated that India had around 135 million active handsets, with around 6 million signing up per month — together with a growing emphasis on rural market growth. So it’s hardly surprising that Adroit Claretdene Infotech has launched a free WAP email service, emailatmobile.com. The service runs on WAP 1.2 and should, theoretically, run on any WAP capable handset. I don’t have any stats to hand about India’s most popular handsets, but I’m willing to bet that a high percentage are WAP capable.
The service works with any POP or IMAP account and although the service is offered free, users should be careful to check out their provider’s data charges. Yachna from Adroit indicates that India’s mobile operators are offering unlimited GPRS browsing for around Rs 99/month (1.2 pounds, ~2.4 dollars).
No word on the emailatmobile.com model — perhaps it’s an ad-driven play.
I’ll definitely follow-up with them soon to see how they’re getting on.
Well, the mobile users in India can broadly be divided into two categories…
a) Those who use their phones for just calling and messaging …about 99.9%
b) Those who actually use their phones for browsing the internet, checking their mails, etc…around 0.01%
This problem is not because we don’t have access to the latest handsets but because people look at their handsets as a status symbol rather than what it was meant to be. I’ve seen people with high end phones like the communicators, n95, etc who don’t even know how to access the music player, let alone access the internet. Its kinda disheartening when i see a good high end business phone in somebody’s hand and get all excited (i am a sucker for good phones), only to be told that they were bought just because they are the latest handsets in the market.
So even though its good to hear companies promoting e-mail on handsets, I don’t think it’ll really make any difference unless the people, who own e-mail capable handsets, actually take time out to learn how to use them correctly.
Hi Dhruv
Somehow I don’t agree with your thoughts about the Indian Mobile subscribers. Though mobile users in India use their phones mostly for calling and messaging, they do use it for browsing Internet also. As per the TRAI’s (Telecom Regulatory Authority of India) quarterly telecom performance indicator report, the total number of Wireless Internet (GPRS + CDMA Internet Access) users, at the end of September 2007, was 46.37 million, which is around 22% of Total Indian Mobile Subscriber base.
I agree some people buy high end phones like Nokia N series, communicator and all, only for show off but this statement can not be generalized for the entire Indian mobile subscriber base.
Then there are also people, like me who are not interested in downloading mobile ringtones and wall papers but if such mobile email facility I can get for free on my ordinary mobile phone, I’ll definitely get GPRS activated. I think this is a good facility to have and people will go for such kind of mobile solutions which comes free.
Hey Sneha, I’m sure you are probably right in what you are saying. I know I don’t have any data to support my point (my apologies) but i just made the statement from what I’ve seen around me. I’m in my early 20s and honestly, I expected most of the people my age to actually use their phones for more than just talking and texting.
Also out of the 22% internet users that you have mentioned, is it the number of people that use the internet to access it on their phone or on their computers, in order to avoid buying a modem? Because I know a number of people who do just that.
By the way, when i meant using their phones for more than just calling and texting, i didnt mean simply downloading ringtones and wallpapers, i meant checking mails, subscribing to feeds, using the memos and to-do lists, opening e-mail attachments, etc
“Unlimited GPRS ” – could i know which operators in mumbai are offering this scheme?