According to Sunil Dutt, managing director, Research In Motion (RIM) India, the National Telecom Policy 2012 (NTP) has had a big and positive impact on the mobile industry.
Dutt believes that the first four objectives of the policy are crucial. These objectives are:
?Providing secure, affordable and high quality telecom services
?Increasing rural tele-density from 39 per cent to 70 per cent by 2017 and 100 per cent by 2020
?Providing affordable broadband services to Indians by 2015 and achieving 175 million and 600 million broadband connections by 2017 and 2020, respectively.
?Enabling citizens to participate in e-governance in sectors like health, education, skill development, employment, banking etc to ensure equitable growth.
Dutt, says, ?Further, the policy NTP clearly specifies the urgent requirement of technological solutions that can reach out to larger population of the country. It becomes imperative for mobile phone manufacturers as well as services providers to tap that opportunity, especially when the government, Reserve Bank of India, regulatory body, industrial associations and various other concerned stakeholders are talking about the urgent requirement to focus on mobile banking technology, etc.?
In 2013, Dutt sees the government investing substantially in the telecom industry to help operators grow the market.
Commenting on the performance of the sector in 2012, Dutt, shares, ?For many of us in the mobile industry 2012 has been a year when there has been a lot to celebrate and an equal amount to be concerned about. Restrictions and regulations are growing. Too much regulation could result in constraints in growth. For us in the mobile device business, it is time to re-imagine everything. Owing to the increase in smartphone adoption, the increasing use of tablets and the growing comfort levels with technologies such as cloud is making it easy for consumers to access their data from anywhere at any time at seriously low costs.?
According to Dutt, the year 2013 will experience innovation in the field of mobile devices where the industry will witness powerful yet efficient processors clubbed with technologies like near field communication, 4G, and innovative applications. In the coming years, the hardware of these mobile devices has to keep pace with the big shifts happening in the software segment. In the future, the industry will come out with superior and more refined specifications in mobile devices.
Dutt, adds, ?In the recent past, the competition in the operating system market has been intense and in 2013 the mobile industry is expected to get to the next phase of evolution, i.e, mobile computing. It is a revolutionary phenomenon which is going to redefine the mobile industry.?
Dutt is confident that the year 2013 will see a lot of action in the mobile space. He identifies following key statistics and facts for his optimism regarding an encouraging performance of mobile industry in the near future –
Currently, there are just 27 million smartphone urban users in India, which is barely 9 per cent of total mobile phone users. This indicates that there is a huge opportunity for the growth in smartphone adoption in India. This pent-up demand will drive innovation in India.
Access to better networks is also going to contribute to the growth of mobile devices in the country. The year-on-year 3G subscriber growth in India is pegged at 841 per cent in comparison to China (115 per cent), U.S. (31 per cent), UK (25 per cent) and Japan 9 (per cent).
Dutt further, says, ?The good news is that unlike the internet, mobile is not a mere bubble. Users over mobile platform are willing to pay for services and providing the required boost to the industry. Add to this the potential for mobile commerce, innovation around video that is still in its infancy on the mobile, and revenue from advertising and applications and we have a thriving mobile eco-system.?
