From Auto to Australia, Talk is Cheap... watch out Posted by Raj , Saturday, September 25, 2010 at 6:34 AM, in

On my auto rickshaw ride to Santhome, the driver’s mobile phone chirped out loud. The driver pulled over and inserted his headphone and got back on to the road continuing towards Arumbakam. Needless to say, the conversation was noisy. After hanging up, he revealed the call originated from Melbourne, Australia and he had to talk at the highest pitch as it was a long distance call. It is not that drivers are able to have a full forty-five minute conversation while maneuvering during the peak traffic in Chennai. It is also that international calls on cell phones are dirt cheap.
What is good to the auto-rickshaw driver is not necessarily good for the mobile operators and vendors. Price-war is saturated and probably will not go down any further. Profit margins for mobile providers are equally low. The push is on for selling more data services. Local vendors are given more incentives to sell. Yet, the data-plan growth does not come easy. So far mobile operations have shown they can make profits from the poor. But to persuade smaller vendors to sell next level of data service require major investment and that could be a stretch.

There is sufficient support for advertisements embedded on mobile applications that could encourage geo positioned sales. Manufacturers like Nokia are encouraging software developers to write applications for their devices, much based on the success of iPhone and Blackberry. Looking ahead at the technology horizon, developing mobile applications could in fact be a fast growth route for small businesses. If small companies succeed in selling hundred rupee software for mobile phones, it will not be that far away to see an auto-driver to pull over to type a few line to his friends in Australia!