Detail of Event:

MoMoB Oct 2009-Tech Session on Adobe Flash Lite:

Based on the Adobe Flash Platform,Adobe Flash Lite is highly optimized implementation of the Flash Run time for mobile phones,consumer electronic devices and internet-connected home digital devices.Flash Lite enable OEMs and service providers to differentiate their devices via customized application and user interface,a more complete web experience and the ability to acess video and rich content across devices.Flash Lite for the digital homes enables the delivery of high definition content and rich application to the internet- connected TVs and TV-connected consumer electronic devises.Flash Lite for the digita homes enables the delivery of high-definition content and rich application to the internet connected.TVs and TV-connected consumer electronic devices in the digital living room.Additionally,Flash Lite allow developer to quickly create enaging applications,accelerate time to market and increase customer adaptation.Debashish From the Adobe Engineering Team will demonstrate how easy is to create Flash Lite application and Deploy on Phone.This will be a practical session,where the audience can follow the presenter on the laptop and eventually would have Flash Lite application ready for use.

• Participants who are interested to follow the session Hands On should download the trial version of the Creative Suite after registering the link:http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/tdrc/index.cfm?loc=en&product=flash

Agenda:

• First thing first for Flash Lite Development.
• How to create,Publish,Test and Deploy a simple flash lite application on to a phone-This will be a practical session.
• Creating a Real-Life-app-this will bring out the latent power of flash lite,it will touch upon the general concepts along with design and development approach-tis will also be on the Fly
• Quick tips and trips.
• Demo.
• Q&A.

Speaker Details:

Debashish Paul,

Lead Software Engineer

Tenure in MDBU:4Years

• Was into multimedia,e-learning and advertising design nd developmentfor three years before Adobe
• Have done a lot of concept mobile applications using Adobe Mobile Technologies
• A co-inventor of a mo0bile interaction frame work.
• Have got a couple of awards in usability and interaction design competitions.
• Photography travel and wild life are few of the hobbies i am passionate about.

When:
Date 10th-oct-2009Time 10:30 to 3:30
Tea/Coffee/light snacks /Lunch break in between the workshop

Venue:Craig Barret Auditorium,
Sasken Communication Technologies Limited139/25,
Domlur Inner Ring Road,Bangalore,Karnatka-560071

Driving Directions:When driving down from Koramangala:
Take the left into the lane in front of Hyundai Workshop – just after Mother Earth - and then the first left, second right – leads up to Sasken.
When driving from Indiranagar –
Old Airport road flyover side:Drive past EGL offices on the left – stay on the ring road -
Take the U Turn and come back towards Hyundai Workshop - then take the left into the lane in front of Hyundai Workshop –
just after Mother Earth - and then the first left, second right – leads up to Sasken

Parking:Ample parking space is available in the grounds next to the Sasken building

Register here for the event http://momob1009.eventbrite.com (Event is free to attend but registration is necessary)

Devices

Karbonn K217, Sony Ericsson C903, HTC Hero, Spice D6666, Samsung Omnia Pro, Intex IN 4477

Nokia’s devices are apparently eco-friendly – They are reducing the usage of hazardous material in their mobiles.

Apps/Services

ESPN has launched mobile TV service for a few of its programs – could not find out about operator support. It supports only Nokia, Sony Ericsson and Blackberry devices now. Airtel offers 50+ channels in its service. Apart from these, MTV, Colors and other channels are on the way.

Navteq has expanded its Indian presence. Slowly & steadily, they are becoming a tough competitor to MapMyIndia. However, people to be noted is – BIGMaps. They have launched now only with Reliance Mobiles but hope they offer services to everyone through APIs soon.

MTNL has launched its own LBS service based on mobile network information itself.

An application for booking doctor’s appointments through SMS has been launched in Kochi.

UshaComm is looking for grand expansion in Africa for VAS services – frankly, I have not heard much about them in India. Are they big? Or are they just into billing?

RML has tied up with Idea Cellular to expand their agriculture information services. What is puzzling is – they have their own service offered separately, offered through Nokia with Idea again etc – how are all these differentiated?

Nokia Messaging may get launched in India in December 2009 with push email support.

SMSGupShup, the ‘Desi Twitter’ will soon launch ‘real time search’ of its messages. Sorry if I am being irreverent, does serious talk happen in SMSGupShup channels, is it not filled with jokes and ‘timepass’ material.

Operators

Numbers starting with ‘8’ have started coming out – Reliance has started a gimmick with that already, the BOSS (8055) series.

Blackberry is trying to get into the customer segment and seems to be getting some success too. Aircel and DoCoMo have started offering Blackberry services too.

Climax of the Bharti-MTN saga is coming soon. Bharti seems to have sweetened the deal a bit.

Essar Group has taken control of Yu, a Kenyan operator. Meanwhile, BSNL & MTNL are rumored to have bought stake in Zain, though they claim to be still only ‘considering’ it.

DoCoMo have expanded their ‘charged in paisas’ tune to SMS also. After pay one paisa per second, it is pay one paisa per character in SMS.

Regulators

The Government has once again set a deadline to block phones without IMEI – Nov. 30. COAI has already asked for more time.

The ‘pre-bid meeting’ for 3G is planned for 13-October. Here is hoping that it happens for sure. By the way, new players may pay 3% of revenues for 3G spectrum.

The prime minister is interested in mBanking – Good news this.

DoT & National UID Project people will discuss about how mobile subscription numbers can be utilized for the UID project.

Others

When you talk to call center agents at telcos, do not lose your temper – your calls may get blocked. I agree with this, sometimes we behave really bad with them, but then the decision to block should not be left with the lowest level employees.

Statistics for August – Subscriptions, Market Shares etc. And by the way, Indian mobile content market will be worth $2.3 billion by 2013.

One more report from Vital Analytics – on mobile gaming in Urban India. As we are at it, IndiaGames have launched new games on latest movies.

(Back after a 2-week hiatus. Sorry for the inconvenience!)

Devices

Quite a few models released. Am just going to list them here, without details: Motorola Debut i856, Micromax X310, X2i, C2i,GC700, Nokia 5230, 5730XpressMusic, 5800 Navigation, Maxx MX455, MX335, LG GB270 Dynamite, GB230, KP265, SpiceM4580, M5252, Onida F830, Belkyn Skype Phone, Fly E105, DS440, Samsung Omnia Pro, Sony Ericsson W205 & W395,Karbonn K550, Intex – 4 New handsets and yeah MTNL branded 3G phone by Micromax and 3G Netbook by TTSL.

Soon to come: iPhone 3GS At Rs. 40K. We know the result already!

Applications/Services

A new standard for Indian-language SMS seems to be coming soon. Is there not a world-wide standard for this? (or is it just Unicode across?). Will try to find out how Chinese/Japanese/Korean SMS-es work and update soon.

RockeTalk, the social network app for India seems to be going great guns. They had launched with only LG but now they seem to be going into Samsung & Nokia mobiles too. Further, they have tied up with Channel [V] also. By the way, Geodesic’s Mundu suite might soon get a social networking application also, through an acquisition.

Airtel is planning to launch ‘health services’ with a rural focus. Good, but why don’t Nokia, Airtel etc work together to make an integrated service framework of Life Tools & other such services? On a related note, Homoeopathy clinic Batras seem to be offering “live consultation” over mobile.

Also, if you read the article on health in the news item above till the end, the CMO of Airtel seems to be suggesting that operators might reduce their revenue share percentage soon. Good News. With their own R&D center in India (which might produce more value added service than just timed SMS) & even buying other players, if DoCoMo plans to get into innovative VAS pricing too like in other countries, things will change for sure!! In contrast, there could also be a termination charge for VAS services – that could lead to death of several free SMS services.

Nokia Music Store is alive with 3 million songs – but you cannot buy music from there from a PC. You need vouchers that you will get when buying a Nokia phone or you should buy from a Nokia phone. Hey this is bad, I thought Nokia was a services co but they seem to be still intent of selling devices

Airtel has expanded its m-Commerce tie up with mChek to include IVR based transactions also. mCommerce might gain ground in India with Nokia launching Nokia Money. A neat analysis of the perils of mCommerce in India is available here.

MTNL has launched a Location based service in Mumbai with the usual aspects like ATM Search, Friend Search etc.

New & niche applications & services are indeed getting launched – Saffron Art app for m-bidding, Antakshari on mobile, SMS basedvending machines, Stock Purchase, LPG Refill & enterprise app for data collection by Kaybase. Hope there are enough takers for these.

Yet another smartphone app for mobile tracking, back up etc has been launched in India by a company based out of Dubai.

Nuance is reported to be launching voice based soft recognition service with a few operators.

Operators

DoCoMo’s entry and pricing plans have for sure taken other operators aback. A casual talk with a few people in the operator’s circle revealed that they are yet to come to terms with it. Aircel seems to have taken the first step to counter that – innovative 1-2-3 planswhere the tariff reduce after the first two minutes. They have also launched a ‘per second’ plan (similar to DoCoMo) in Kolkata. Meanwhile, DoCoMo’s CDMA alter-ego Tata Indicom has gone a step-further and launched ‘pay per call’ plans – just pay Rs. 3 and keep talking without disconnecting the call. Other innovative models like e-paid (postpaid & prepaid combined) from Loop Mobile are also coming up.

Airtel-MTN talks are still continuing and will go on till Sept-30. They seem to be facing quite an uphill task here. The South African Government supports the deal. Meanwhile, MTN seems to be directly interested in SingTel as well (indirectly through Airtel, they anyways tie up with SingTel since SingTel is a major shareholder in Airtel)

AT&T is interested in taking up stake in BSNL. Will they lose money or will BSNL gain by this? I am afraid it could be the former.

S-Tel plans to launch service by end of this year. Pretty modest guys, they are clear they do not want to get into 3G game now and are content with 2G. They made a tower sharing deal with Reliance recently.

Spice & Virgin have expressed interest in being franchisees of MTNL’s 3G service. Virgin might be able to bring in all their MVNO experience here. Meanwhile, MTNL has plans of acquiring majority stake in a Nigerian operator. On the African Safari of the Indian operators, RCom plans to buy out Zain.

Regulators

Implementation of MNP has been postponed to December 31 (I guess & hope 2009 only ;-))

TRAI has rolled back its recent stringent norms for ‘Caller Tune’ kind of services and has changed it now to make it easy for the operators and also safe for the customers.

It is too late to cover the 3G pricing & auction news! Nevertheless, this link gives you all info you would need – auctions are happening within 90 days! While there are cribs that the price is high, some do feel it is fair. Another department (Space) has woken up now and has expressed concern over the WiMax spectrum interfering with their spectrum. In the hope that the auction would indeed happen as scheduled now, Airtel announces that their 3G services would launch in October 2010. Meanwhile, Qualcomm seems to begoing ahead with clear plans for 3G services in India by building a grand ecosystem.

The % of revenue that operators should share with the Government has been different for long distance operators, mobile operators in A Circles, C Circles etc. DoT has decided to do away with this and charge a flat 8.5% on all of them. Further, operators may need topay only for services using the spectrum and not their total revenue.

Indian Government plans to ban Chinese network vendors from operating in India, particularly in the sensitive border areas – Telcos are worried that this might lead to escalating costs for them. To top it, operators may soon be asked to check their SIM purchases also to have SAS accreditation. And yeah, the Government may set up an agency to monitor all our calls.

TRAI has been given time till November to decide the 2G policy.

Others

Google claims to have been pleasantly surprised by the number of GPRS Users in India – to use Orkut application. Don’t we continuously crib about the lack of GPRS penetration in India? Probably, it is time to take a reality check – though I do not see these numbers in any of the statistics that come out every month. A little bird with the operator says that the penetration is only about 2% for all operators!

SMSGupShup claims to have 22 million users in India, more than Twitter, Facebook & Orkut combined (in India). Their competitor Way2SMS claim to have crossed 5 million.

There is a highly improbable rumor that we may have mobile voting in 4-5 years.

Nokia CEO meets the PM of India – Nokia’s hope is on emerging markets – with installments for phones and what not.

An insightful article on mobile games is available at AFAQs.

Dear MoMo Community,

This is an attempt to have a ‘Weekly Newsletter’ for the MoMo community (thanks to Rajan for setting this up).  I already blog this at http://mobilenewsindia.blogspot.com/.

For the first few weeks, it will be cross-posting between both the places. Later, as we see the feedback, we will have special editions for MoMo

You may expect a post every Sunday/Monday on this.

Looking forward to your feedback,

Karthik Srinivasan (carnivas@gmail.com)

Devices

A very affordable dual SIM phone by Karbonn has been released. Another player at the low end, Micromax has launched a dual-SIM ‘chatting phone’ with Nimbuzz preloaded in it. Spice has launched a dual SIM model too with nothing less than Windows Mobile in it. Heard that Indian low cost players and the Chinese are fighting for the low end while the high end is safe for the big-brands. Will Nokia’s low end market be in trouble?

Samsung has launched 2 phones in the Omnia series – to compete with iPhone and Touch Diamond.

Applications/Services

Virgin Mobile has launched a phonebook backup service.

NXP’s smart card solution has been chosen by Indian Railways for contactless ticket vending machines.

RCom has launched a ‘mobile conference’ facility at Rs. 99 a month for both its GSM & CDMA subscribers. Up to 9 numbers are supported and all of them should have this facility enabled.

SatNav has partnered with the largest organization that would have information on India – The Survey of India. Hope to see a lot of useful apps now.

SMSGupShup has launched a developer platform to utilize their SMS framework. Way to go!

Tata Indicom has launched a campaign to promote m-learning services.

ITC & Monster have launched a rural job portal. Mobile access seems to be not available yet. Any news about the success of BabaJob and Airtel tie up? Meanwhile, Airtel & IFFCO have tied up to reach mobile services to rural Andhra Pradesh.

A few channels from the Star TV Group are now available on mobile phones through Apalya Technologies. They are available for 2.5G networks also – but who guarantees the speed?

iJiny is a new player to offer ‘micro-classifieds’ in India. You guessed it right – the max length of your classified ad should be 160 characters in length. (The iJiny site is not opening though at this moment!)

Operators

MTNL has launched 3G service Jadoo in Mumbai. Their Wimax franchisee offer has no takers though. But BSNL’s Wimax roll out is on – a US co has bagged the deal for equipment. Bids for its rural roll out will begin on 25-August. BSNL has got 40K subscribers for its 3G service and the price has been lowered too.

An insightful summary of all the 3G/Wimax games played by MTNL & BSNL is available at Developing Telecoms Blog. In fact, there was an ‘India Week’ at DTW – 2 articles on MNP affecting telcos appeared too. (first, second). Medianama’s analysis on MNP can be found here.

For other operators wanting 3G spectrum, please wait – the ministers will hold their second meeting on 27-August.

Mobile numbers starting with ‘8’ may happen soon.

Others

July statistics are out – 325.7 GSM subscribers in all. More at Medianama.

HP, the grand daddy of computing giants will focus on ‘mobile computing space’ from now – with India the focus.

If the mobile carriers indeed share their database, your mobile payment record may be the de-facto credit rating for your loans etc in India.

Vital Analytics has come up with one more report – on the urban internet usage using mobiles.