Thinking from an entrepreneurial angle, it seems to me that there is almost no mobile app market in India today i.e., it is not a startuppable market.

All the successful apps that are making money are transaction-based. For example, ngpay takes a cut from every movie ticket you buy through it. This is only possible for entertainment-oriented apps. The only other successful ones that I see are, of course, communication apps such as Gmail app. I see almost nobody using utility applications on their phones.

Things can improve only if internet-on-mobile was affordable! I think we need 3G for mobile app market to grow in India, but it is delayed yet again (Apparently, the government is not satisfied with the expected 250 billion rupees).

Let’s take a look at few numbers:

• 93.2% of Vodafone India subscribers are prepaid customers, which means it is unlikely they subscribe to monthly fees for internet-on-mobile. Right?
• 96% of Urban Indian mobile users are not accessing the Internet and 48% of Urban India mobile users accessed the Internet on their mobile only 1-3 times a month, on average!

Of course, there is no denying that there is growth year-over-year, but for an entrepreneur, it is not enough yet. Because you can’t build yet-another-social-network nor can you build content unless you have tie-ups with the big movie/music companies. The top websites in India for internet-on-mobile conform to the core needs list that I wrote about earlier, especially entertainment. The free wallpapers from zedge.net seems to be the hottest thing right now. Or as Rajesh Jain keeps stressing (and practises), focus on SMS and Voice for now.

Let’s hope the IAMAI will help things move forward.

Even when we get affordable internet-on-mobile, I wonder if ad-supported free applications will be the only popular ones always. Where’s the money?

Maybe I completely mistaken or I’m just whiny, because MediaNama paints a much brighter picture, from comics to unlimited music for Rs. 99/month to movie rental and chocolates. Hah! There is a gotcha there — all those announcements are from big guys. Where are the mobile app startups?

I am planning to attend Silicon India’s Mobile Conference this month to gain more perspective on this.

To round things up, here are some rough notes that I jotted down when Karthee Madasamy of Qualcomm Ventures talked about How to make a winning mobile startup at an OCC Meet on Aug 15. It was probably the only time I felt hopeful that a mobile app startup is possible today.

• Understand the status quo. Don’t do the status quo.
• If there are hurdles, that’s your opportunity. Otherwise, others would’ve taken advantage already.
• India 400 million mobile phone users.
• Segment the customer. Otherwise, big companies will be already on it.
• Don’t aim for 1% of ocean. Go for 50% of a small market that you undertand well.
• Don’t do today’s technology. Go for future. Don’t be 10% better, be significantly better.
• Do you have something unique that gives you strengths? Have a honest discussion on the problems and future competitors and your strengths.
• Can you partner with others in the ecosystem, support their weaknesses, and together be more strong.
• Ecosystem problems – operators, heterogenity of platforms and mobile phone capabilities, difficulty in educating customers, no Internet on mobile, etc.
• Only way a startup will succeed is by discovering a latent demand or latent technology.
• If operators are critical to the ecosystem, obviously they will charge more money! Why is that a problem because they are giving value back. Get the first million customers yourself and the operators will put red carpet for you. Startups’ strength is to turn the tables!
• Find a mechanism of educating customer about value of the product and that will obviate the need for operators.
• If only 40 million mobile Internet users, you only need half a million users to break through the barriers! People will come after you.
• Assume cost of building product or app is zero. Only building half a million customers is something.
• 120 million capable phones today. India is a fast market. Imagine 2 years later.
• Startups should change the game to their advantage. At the same time, it is NOT a zero-sum game. Make a win-win partnership. Both people should profit.
• Don’t complain about market research. Ultimately, you HAVE to understand the market better than anybody. Be resourceful. Also, accuracy is not important, the direction of the market growth is more important.
• Don’t go to VCs without 20,000-30,000 users.
• Can you scale up to 20 million dollars revenue? Then you’ll get your pay-off.
• Startups need to think how to beat the big guys.
• Make a state-of-the-art technology or business model and ask people to pay premium for it.
• First step for product management is segmentation.
• Make it clear to yourself about how you’re reaching your target customers. Don’t do it in a haphazard manner.
• Read about Ron Coase economist why companies exist.
• Read about Teece theory on who captures value in technology.

Question: Will the future consist of people carrying a single device or multiple gadgets?

Arguments for one device

1. Students use it for everything. After reading this New York Times article on how mobile phones are used in South Korea, I’m astounded about the possibilities. Students are using their mobile phones for buying food tickets in the cafeteria, for paying the subway fare, sending virtual coupons for physical gifts, as the university ID card for swiping into the library, and so on. And all this is beyond the existing functionality of camera, internet, sms, location, etc.

2. Centre of innovation. Companies are extending mobile phones in innumerable ways in an effort to add more features and make new models. For example, Samsung has launched “Solar Guru E1107″, a mobile phone that will get recharged via the solar panels on its back when you’re outside. And it costs just Rs. 2799.

3. Alpha geeks extending Android. Brad Fitzpatrick got his Android-based phone to open his garage door automatically when he starts coming close to his house, Sony is making future walkmans based on Android, Canonical is making Android apps work on Ubuntu, and Android can even be inside your future washing machine. Alpha geeks are extending Android to do cool stuff (of course with hardware providing relevant functionality), and Android is becoming all-pervasive, which means the code could be reused across devices, which means there is a greater chance that all that functionality can be on one device.

4. TWIT says so. In TWIT Episode 193, Harry of Technologizer.com conjectured that “In 10 years, the devices of the day will be descendants of the iPhone and not descendents of the Mac.”

Arguments for multiple devices

The problem with a single device is that they become a jack-of-all-master-of-none and quickly become difficult to use for non-teenagers.

There are many one-functionality devices that have come up in the past few years and people seem to love it:

• iPod for music
• Kindle for reading ebooks
• CrunchPad for internet browsing
• Peek for email
• MingleStick for business cards
• Leyio for sharing files in-person
• Pogoplug for sharing files from your external hard disk over the internet
• Fitbit for monitoring your health and exercise

Bottom-line

This seems to be a tussle of hardware vs. software, for example, one-functionality devices vs. app stores.

In the end, I think whoever wins the usability battle will win the customers.

Prof. Sadagopan has an interesting take on how the mobile phone is evolving and how he views its relationship with the PC:

In the GSMA World Congress in Barcelona during Feb 16-19, 2009, Acer (the laptop manufacturer) launched four (mobile) handsets under the brand name “Tempo”

Last week Nokia talked of linux-based Laptops to be introduced in the market soon.

…

What will be interesting is the fulfillment of my “dream wish” – seamlessly integrated PC and Smart Phone. Let me elaborate.

I find my mobile phone substitute half my PC functionality, but only half. Half the time I use my PC for writing; but even during my writing, I need to check Wikipedia, IIIT web-site, my blog site … so I need communication function. If only the PC and Smart phone can act seamlessly, it will be great. I pick up my long mails on PC without I having to connect. I can Skype or call using my PC; I click the pictures with my mobile phone camera, but I need not have to “synch”‘; I need the screen of my PC to view my pictures. Similar is my need for “seamless” synch – addresses, phone numbers, appointments. Also I need not worry about Internet connection in hotel rooms (and the rip off the hotels do) as my PC will instantly connect

It is the same with phones a decade back; we all loved our reliable “black” phone; will work even in UP with terrible power supply (as the phone draws power from telephone exchange); it could hold for 2 hour call even. Of course, we all had our “cordless” that let me pick up the phone in my bedroom or walk around the lawn with the phone in my hand; the two phones were “identical” for me; the same number, but allowed me to choose the function in the context; why cant PC and Smart Phone do the same? Let the PC be my reliable “base set” and the mobile phone my “cordless”. No need for add-ons.

I’ve been trying to articulate how my usage and behavior has changed these days because of a new phone, however I wasn’t able to put it in the right words; thankfully, Prof. Sadagopan puts it across succinctly.

Let me give you an example. If there are articles I want to save and read later whenever I have time, I add it quickly to Instapaper using their bookmarklet and then their application on my phone automatically syncs via the Internet. It’s simple, works fast, and is a no-brainer.

This may not seem like a big deal, but this has actually helped me in an emergency situation in my last trek. I had saved the phone numbers of the nearest hotels via Instapaper. Without that, we would have not known what to do with an injured friend, stuck in the middle of a forest at night with 3 torches for 11 people, with no houses closer than 3-4 km, and not easy to see where we are going which means anybody else could get injured easily as well. Phew, what a situation to be in, and yet this “half-PC” mobile phone helped the situation. We were able to get a jeep guy to come immediately and he told us the location to come to which was less than 1 km away, the friend was taken to the hospital, stitched up in the head and a cast on his fractured hand. Thankfully, the whole situation went smooth.

Of course, you can argue that I could’ve just saved the numbers manually. The point is that I saved the page only because it was a one-click operation. There is no way I would have anticipated that I would need the phone numbers of these hotels because we planned to stay in tents in the hill and we never planned to visit the hotels. It’s like why would you save the hotel numbers in Malaysia if you only intended to stay in Singapore. But yet, if it was simple and fast, you might just do it.

There are more uses for this “half-PC”, for example there is a wide range of things it could do when you’re on travel like instantly telling you phrases in a foreign language, helping you to catalogue details of the trip such as what are the flight or bus timings, etc. and even helps you figure out where you are by showing your location on the map (again, this feature has been surprisingly useful to me in the recent past).

All this is possible because the phones are so advanced these days, and most common phones 2-3 years from now (cough Android cough) will all have the same facilities, not just the high-end ones.

And this brings me back to Prof. Sadagopan’s wish, which I simulate by syncing data from the computer to a central website and back to the iPhone. For example, my tasks are on Remember The Milk and their uber-awesome phone application stores it on my phone, my contacts are synced from the address book to the phone, my appointments are on Google Calendar, and so on. These days, I don’t even read the oh-so-negative newspapers, I just read the stuff I’m interested in on Google Reader on the phone while I’m having breakfast. The mobile interface for GReader is so easy to use that it’s addictive. As for the icing on the cake, I’m still using the WiFi network, so I don’t have to worry about the currently exorbitant GPRS tariff when I’m at home or office.

Notice that all the data is shared equally, but the functionality is split. I do mostly lookups, reading and minor editing on the phone, but do the major manipulation / heavy work on the PC. That’s why the term “half-PC” makes sense.

I never used to pay attention to the “phone is the screen of the future” mantra, but now I’m beginning to believe it.