India, according to BusinessWeek and other sources, is now the second largest mobile market on Earth. Between 250 to 300 million Indians now own mobile phones in a country with only 30 million personal computers. That's 25% of India's 1.1B citizens. Over 8 million Indians sign up for cellular service each month.
Average monthly carrier revenues (USD) in mobile-intensive countries is staggering: $10 in India, $12 in China and $30 in the U.S., although other research shows an average of $55 per subscriber in the United States. Voice minutes cost 1.3 cents in India, 8.4 cents in Pakistan and 3.5 cents in China. To my knowledge, carriers in these countries have yet to offer "talk all you want" plans recently introduced by U.S. carriers Verizon, AT&T and Sprint. (See my post on Sprint regarding its marketing challenges.)
Although India's mobile users are purchasing over $250 million a year in additional wireless services--text messaging, music, wallpaper, games and Web surfing, with expected growth to $1.7B by 2010--currently 80% of data purchases represent text messaging and ring tones. In fact, Indians send over 25 BILLION text messages a year. Additional data purchases are stymied by low-end handsets, price and lack of mobile services.
As expected, India's younger, tech savvy subscribers are the most likely purchasers of mobile services--from online banking to entertainment. Dozens of players, including Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, as well as telecom providers--Bharti Airtel, Vodafone, Reliance Communications and Tata Teleservices--are developing content: movie schedules, stock quotes and other news services.
Indian mobile carriers, in particular, want to ncrease their current 10% share of information revenues (representing 13% of profits) to 20% of revenues--the "on-deck" information revenues controlled by the carriers and their partners. However, mobile users' desire for content continues its surge, and "off-deck" services, not controlled by the carriers, will proliferate.
Mobile websites, growing rapidly in the global mobisphere, should greatly interest Indian businesses, who seek innovative ways to sell to mobile users, especially considering low PC penetration in the country.
Discovering which mobile services interest India's growing mobile community is the key. In an earlier post on mobile banking, for example, I cited research indicating that younger U.S. cellular users are more interested in ATM and bank location expansion than accessing accounts on their handsets:
An eye-opening study
by Javelin Strategy and Research concludes that even Gen-Y consumers
(18-29) are not as hot on mobile and online usage as one might assume.
"Regardless of Gen Y’s proclivity to initiate online transactions and
use mobile phones and technology in general, Javelin data shows that
Gen Y is not ready to abandon the brick-and mortar, or other channels,
to go completely online or to the handset for all their banking needs.
For example, when selecting a new financial services provider, Gen Y
consumers ranked access to ATMs and access to branches as more
important than online service capabilities, in comparison to those of
other age groups."
Marketers seeking to penetrate the mobile space are carefully watching India.
Lennart Svanberg, the Producer of the Internet Marketing Conference in New York on June 4th, 2008, speaks with Brian Prows in this podcast about growing interest among Internet marketers in mobile applications. 
