Realigning for Growth

As consumer segment revenues get cannibalized by growing apps usage, telcos are focusing more on enterprise business for growth.

Arapid rise in the smartphone penetrations, couple with affordable internet access rates, has also turned out to be a growth inhibitor for SMS and traditional value added services (VAS) like MMS, ring-back tones, caller ring-back tones, et al. Users are instead opting for a wide range of apps to do most of the things that VAS could do, and more.

There are mixed views on the future of the mobile VAS market in India. While a consolidated view of the industry by a Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) report shows VAS and SMS revenue as percentages of mobile service revenues are declining year-on-year, or at best almost flat (see table), third-party research reports present more positive outlook.

For example, Market Research Reports, Inc., says the Indian MVAS market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 18.5 percent during the period 2015-2020. The consumer VAS and enterprise VAS market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 19.7 percent and 19.3 percent during the period from 2015 to 2020, respectively, it notes. It sees areas such as mobile-commerce, mobile-governance, mobile-health and mobile-education to be the future drivers of M-VASmarket growth in India.

According to the research firm, the increasing smartphones and tablets market in India has led to the demand of the MVAS and has brought the growth opportunities for the telecom players, content related players and mobile manufacturing players in the market. The recent roll out of the 4G technology is expected to drive data traffic in the future years, it added. It argued that traditional value added services still hold the good growth, while large enterprises are focusing more on mobility applications to reach the customers in an effective way offering user-friendly services to sustain in the market.

Key Players in India

Some of the prominent VAS names in the industry include OnMobile, Comviva, One 97 communications, Mauj Mobile, mCarbon, Netxcell and IMI Mobile, among others.

OnMobile Global in September 2014 announced the signing

OnMobile Global:

of an agreement with Tata Teleservices, making it the exclusive Caller Ring Back Tone partner (CRBT) for the company.

OnMobile will centrally manage Tata’s Content Management Systems across the Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) and Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM). This deal will enable Tata Teleservices to improve operational efficiency, reduce turnaround time and provide a superior user experience to all its subscribers.

This deal, which has been signed for an initial term of three years, will allow Tata Tele’s CDMA subscribers to access a slew of CRBT features which were earlier