Since ‘Modi’ government took charge at helm in May, things have started moving forward in Telecom Industry. Not on roll, industry is still in doldrums; thanks to various scams (2G Spectrum), policy flip-flops (by earlier government) & of course licenses cancellation. Telecos are struggling to maintain the market share with profitability, albeit promising ‘data’ consumption growth.
We bring quick recap of some important stories from telecom India:
- Micromax, the leading Indian Smartphone maker company, has displaced Samsung, to become leading phone maker company, by gaining 16.6{af589cdba9d77786c8c861317dbad60bba1e2ebbf56e2ffab874a1b59fde9ce3} of India’s phone market share, against Samsung’s 14.4{af589cdba9d77786c8c861317dbad60bba1e2ebbf56e2ffab874a1b59fde9ce3}. Samsung still leads Smartphone segment with 25{af589cdba9d77786c8c861317dbad60bba1e2ebbf56e2ffab874a1b59fde9ce3} market share, followed by Micromax at 19.1{af589cdba9d77786c8c861317dbad60bba1e2ebbf56e2ffab874a1b59fde9ce3} of the market.
- Good news is round the corner for telecom manufacturing firms in India, as DoT is keen to explore Chinese subsidy model, to encourage manufacturing of Telecom products in India. We would surely been waiting for this to happen. Who doesn’t want India to become manufacturing heaven?
- The combined revenue of telecom operators have gone up in first quarter of current FY, reports TRAI. As per report, the revenues are grown up by 12{af589cdba9d77786c8c861317dbad60bba1e2ebbf56e2ffab874a1b59fde9ce3} to reach Rs 60,000 Cr. We are likely to see this improve; thanks to hike in tariffs by telcos, combined with data consumption growth.
- Vodafone, the No.2 Telco in India by subscriber count & market share, is quite bullish about growth happening in Enterprise/SME segment for the company. Vodafone Business Group, the unit in charge of the segment, is targeting to double the revenue of VBS in next 4 years and become serious challenger to Bharti Airtel, current market leader.
- Reliance Jio, the telecom arm of Reliance Industries led by Mr. Mukesh Ambani, has already rolled out 85000 km of intra-city fiber, claims Credit Suisse. The fiber network would surely play vital role in carrying heavy data traffic for Reliance’s soon to launch 4G Network. Seems like Jio is quite high on planning backbone before access network is rolled out. Quite good indeed!
- We talked a lot about OTT players eating chunk of messaging revenue of telecom operators, but nothing happened. Now, TRAI has taken the issue quite seriously and even gone step ahead to regularize the OTT players. Don’t know what it means; then read this interesting post here.
When it comes to rollout of LTE Services, Telcos face lots of challenges, including various options available to them & choosing the best one. How shall we do this? Alcatel-lucent, the leading telecom OEM, has come up an interesting white-paper ‘Fast Track LTE Rollout’, where it weighs option among Converged RAN & LTE Overlay Network. Don’t forget to download it here.
We have been seeing interesting developments over recent times in Indian Telecom Industry & more to come, as LTE is still in nascent stage. The stories above highlight the trend in industry, including regulator, where industry is trying to get back to its good old days. We aren’t sure if that’s going to happen sooner, but certainly, we would help you in analyze thing & choosing the best course over time.
Stay tuned to our analysis!