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Customers can easily browse through products by selecting different categories and sub categories. There is also an option of searching for offers at Restaurants, Spas and other entertainment avenues, which are nearby any location.

“At Snapdeal, we continuously seek ways of enhancing product experience and generating more value for the customers. Goes without saying, it will make Snapdeal available to a much wider audience of mobile subscribers and strengthen our presence.” says Rishabh Arora, Business Head – Mobile at Snapdeal.com

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But what it did was to start massive copyright violations, which lead to songs transfer. In 2000, American record label A&M records sued Napster for piracy. Napster did battle it out in the court, but lost the cases and eventually had to pay $26 million as settlement.

So what is music piracy al about?

Music piracy can be defined as the stealing of music. One scenario could be borrowing a friend’s CD and burning a copy for yourself. Also, downloading music from the Internet if the song’s royalties are not paid.

But the trend of downloading songs from the Internet was first innovated and started in 1993 in the University of California by Rob Lord, Jeff Patterson and Jon Luini.

Since then it has spread its roots all over and now music piracy is a part and parcel of the game.

In India, the concept of online music started approximately four to fiver year’s back. Music companies like Saregama HMV, T Series and Sony BMG have started digitizing their tracks and since then the online music market has also started growing.

India boasts of rich heritage of music. Be it be classical, or Bollywood, rock or pop, the country has space for millions. While the original CD, cassettes would be expensive; the pirated CDs movies would hardly cost anything. Therefore piracy is a good medium for many to earn good bucks.

According to the figures from the International Intellectual Property Alliance, India suffers a staggering 17.7 from the piracy, which includes music piracy, video piracy, software piracy and games piracy.
And with the advent of the multi-media phones, mobile piracy is the newest form of piracy.

With the multi-media phones, listening to music on the go has got a whole new dimension. Mobile companies are trying to outdo each other, trying to get the latest software, thorough which listening to music, watching a video is a whole new experience.

But it seems Nokia has stepped up to the plate by launching localized Ovi Music Unlimited (OMU) service in Delhi to fight illegal music downloads.

With the OVI music, one gets more than four million ‘legal’ tracks from across 19 genres including Rock, Rap, Hip Hop, Pop, Bollywood, Sufi, Indipop, Indian Classical, Devotional, Ghazals, Malayalam, Tamil, Gujarati, Bengali, Punjabi and Bhojpuri, amongst others.

With the new Nokia Ovi music, the consumers who buy a Nokia Ovi Music Unlimited enabled device will be able to download millions of tracks for free, direct to their mobile phone or to their PC from the Ovi Music Store for 12 months.

Thus the question of piracy is not there as they get original soundtracks at a nominal fee.

Music companies and singers too seem to be happy with the initiative.
Rajat Kakar, Managing director, Universal Music feels that it’s a significant step towards shaping a digital ecosystem.

“Ovi Music Unlimited is truly unique and addresses key challenges of accessibility, affordability and piracy that have existed around music consumption,” he said.

“Our association with the market leader Nokia is a significant step forward in shaping the digital music ecosystem in India,” he added.

Singer Mohit Chauhan too is kicked about that fact that his latest album Fitoor would be available to a wider audience to download legally.

“I am happy to be associated with Nokia with Ovi Music Unlimited that provides my fans a legal platform to download songs from my latest album, Fitoor,” he said.

Nokia’s marketing head Viral Oza claims this initiative to be a win-win situation for all. “Music is a universal language that everyone identifies with. Our composers, singers and technicians put in significant amount of effort to create music that can be enjoyed by everyone,” he said.

“But despite all the hard work the Indian music industry is facing a lot of challenges from illegal downloads. Ovi Music Unlimited is win-win offering that gives consumers a platform to download millions of legal songs for free and music industry an opportunity to monetize those downloads,” he explained.

The Ovi Music Unlimited includes catalogues from major global labels Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, Warner Music Group and EMI Music. Nokia’s local partnerships include South Indian Music Companies Association (SIMCA), Indian Music Industry (IMI), Hungama that represents major labels like Yash Raj, T-series, Eros amongst others.

Though piracy can’t be stopped instantly, but just imagine why would anyone go for a pirated stuff, if you have unlimited original songs, which can be downloaded legally at a nominal rate.

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India is now positioned as the second largest network in the world with 525 million mobile connections (Dec 2009). It is predicted to touch billion plus mobile users by 2015 and expected to cross China’s mark in next 10 years. In fact wireless segment is giving a tough fight to the landline segment in India itself as landline has shown a decline of 0.12 million in December 2009.

With the increase in the number of subscribers there has been an upsurge in the number of service providers as well. The segment has got cluttered by many new telecom operators getting added every year, thus wooing the customers has become really tough. Some operators are trying to persuade their customer by attractive tariff, some with their strong network while other by their Value-added-services (VAS). In the run up to pushing the brand to the customer the telecom segment has become the second largest advertisers after FMCG segment.

Adgully talks to some of the market players and tries to gaze, with 525 million mobile users, which is ever increasing how each of the cellular companies is positioning their brand, product, services differently.

With the advent of too many new players, the market appears to be predominantly driven on tariff, network reach and VAS. Pradeep Shrivastava, CMO, Idea Cellular, believes that the brand building activity is visibly demarcated by two different sets of telecom operators in India. First is the top three or four leading players who have extremely high width, rural reach and whole range of subscriber and on the other hand there are a new set of operators. Shrivastava says, “These new set of operators, who cannot become universal service providers overnight, get into price offers and create a certain disruption in the market, as they may not have the same range of products, value-added-services, quality, reach and width of the network. So they have adopted tariff related advertising.”

On a similar tone Kumar Ramanathan, CMO, Vodafone says, “The only way you can do a breakthrough in the cluttered ecosystem is to take a price that is very aggressive, so it is logical because you cannot come and take a moral highbrow on old brands because you don’t have any credibility and there is no back ground to you. You cannot say you have the best network because you don’t have a background.”

Ramanathan thinks that in telecommunication there is lot of physical effort and assets on the ground which cannot be built in one day. So it is not like other fast moving consumer goods that can be called best by the brand while launching as their might be some scientific research behind it. Whereas here he believes, “In telecommunication you cannot launch and say your product is the best as there are many technicality that comes into place which can only be built over a period of time.”

There are some brands who would believe in attracting the attention of the top end and more evolved subscriber who in addition to heavy voice calling also do extensive VAS work like use of GPRS, download etc. In order to attract these set of audience, some established operators and few new operators also focus on VAS.

Aircel being one of them, Shalini Sethi, Spokesperson, Aircel says, “The whole idea was to focus our positioning and our strategy around VAS which is the future of mobility and we tried to communicate that very clearly.” She informs that VAS contributes to 25-30 per cent of revenue in the world while in India this is still not the case. So it has a great potential in the future in India which still not tapped.

Shrivastava opines, “VAS is a way to communicate that I have a range of services. Essentially these people are talking about why you must stay on my network why I am good. So it is not why “buy” me being answered but it is why “stay” with me being answered.”

So is it a trend that has unknowingly evolved that new operator should focus on tariff while old on VAS and other services? Nikhil Rangnekar, Executive Director India-West, Starcom Worldwide says, “I don’t believe the established brands are focusing on any particular thing while they are talking about VAS and high end services, they still advertise on basic things like network, tariff etc because that is something I don’t think they can move away from.”

Besides the approach, is there any difference in the media mix for new as well as old operators. “The audience for VAS will be different and tariff related audience will be different so media mix will change accordingly,” believes Rangnekar. While Ruby Bana, Chief Intelligence Officer -APAC, Havas Media says, “While planning for a mobile operator I would first choose content and consumer connections based on the brand then the mediums follow as default options.”

As Mobile Number Portability is just around the corner that will come into the play, it will definitely act like a fuel to the competition. When subscriber are getting the option of keeping the same number which they have circulated and just change the operator then it becomes little more attractive for the customer. On this Ramanathan believes, “I would like to believe when number portability comes, the brand with good track records will have definite advantage.”

On the other hand Shrivastava clarifies, “Mobile Number Portability is a matter of choice, and just because I have a choice doesn’t mean I will exercise that choice.” But he also believes, “MNP will be in favour of strong operators and by strong I don’t mean old and established player but strong on network and services, so it will be challenging for weak operators. So we can see strong operators going aggressive when number portability starts in India as they will have opportunity of adding new set of customers to their list.”

The recent feather that mobile telephony has added in the technology front is 3G service but it is still not available with private operators and is not affordable to all. When can we expect the service to be available with the private players and will that help make it affordable to common people also?

Ramanathan says, “When 3G is coming is not clear as government has postponed the auction. As far as affordability is concerned, it will follow demand and supply method, if you can create enough demand for the 3G services the affordability will naturally come into play.”

Not being certain about the arrival of 3G for private players Shrivastava believes the affordability will follow the call rate pattern which was so expensive when mobile had just launched, to what it is now. He says, “Like any other VAS 3G will also go cheaper every quarter, every year and as it gets available on private network it will become more affordable due to competition and to attract customers, price will naturally go down but this will not happen from day zero it will take time.”

With so much happening in the technology front and the kind of penetration that the industry has, there constant talks about mobile being a media and advertising platform. Sethi answers, “The mobile screen is becoming your first screen as it is with you all the time and you are completely dependent on it. Yes it and it is going to be big in the future.”

Most of them agrees to this but also believe that it is in its nascent stage and has a long way to go. Ramanathan says, “Mobile has very high penetration in India which makes it a very nice platform for advertising but that doesn’t means we can use it, as advertising is very intrusive. As customers are very specific about what they want to have and what they don’t want to have. So the entire industry has to evolve and look for a developed model such that we can target only those customers who are interested in getting informed through the advertisements so we still have a long way to go.”

Similarly Ramanathan points, “It is more personal kind of medium so yes certain brand and certain category makes sense but most advertisements are SMSes that are pushed, I don’t think that is the right way to use mobile. I think as a platform it really needs to evolve and we still have a long way to go.”

Shrivastava brings a very important point as he shares, “Mobile is very strong platform for variety of application which is not hypothetical. For example, today 60 per cent of the revenue by the music industry comes from mobile telephony which is transparent and zero piracy medium. While balance 40 per cent put together comes from radio, cinema, television, audio cds etc. So it’s an example of how mobile has become a very strong medium.” He also thinks mobile commerce and mobile banking that is a hit in US market is also a big thing that can develop in India as well.

On the advertising front he shares being very affordable compared to other medium, it has a very a big opportunity to evolve and location base advertising can be used by national and local brands in a big way. He predicts, “So it will also take some time to evolve may be 3 to 5 years to become full of life.”

With all these activities and increasing number of subscribers and operator can we see the sector turning number one in advertising sector overtaking FMCG is the question? Rangnekar points, “While operators are adding more subscribers, the fact is that because of the ‘per second billing’ revenues are shrinking all the time. So it is the matter of how profitable the sector is and how long they will be able to sustain these campaigns.”

Bana says, “Soon they will be the pipeline that distributes most content! It is already a pipeline that connects consumers with each other. When you view it from that perspective its suddenly does not matter if they are 1st or 3rd, as far as traditional advertising is concerned. What will however matter is how they integrate with the consumer’s lives, how they leverage the merging of the brand message & content. The way the telecommunication brands differentiate then will depend on the roles they take on for themselves, which really is exciting new area.”

Having discussed all this, the most important thing that comes out is Brand needs to keep their head above the water by being different, by being relevant to the customer whether giving right offer, right price at right place and right service and that is the key.

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However, to do so, first the user needs to download the ‘OGS client’ software, which will provide ‘one-click’ access to a variety of games.

Moreover, the solution offers personalization features and it was launched at the GSMA Mobile World Congress 2010 in Barcelona, Spain. The solution also guarantees users to only see games that are compatible with their mobile devices.

As per media reports, Manoranjan Mohapatra, chief executive officer (CEO), Comviva said, “Recent reports show mobile gaming industry revenues globally are expected to grow from $4.3 billion in 2008 to $7 billion by 2013. We believe that online gaming options can drive industry revenues far beyond this, especially in price-sensitive emerging markets.”

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Telenor Group – it provides telecommunication services in 14 countries across Europe and Asia. Last month, the company said it has increased its holding in the telecom firm to 60.1 per cent.

Unitech Ltd – it is a realty firm and also a founder Unitech Wirless, which holds the remaining stake in the firm. As per media reports, Unitech confirmed the investment made by Telenor and said, “The telecom firm received the money on Wednesday i.e. February 10 for acquisition of the final 7.15 per cent by Telenor.

In the meantime, Telenor last day reported a 27 per cent growth in net income at 2.49 billion kroner ($423 million) for the fourth quarter of 2009.

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Similarly, Finnish Telecom also plans to launch the limited number of mobile handsets but at the price of Rs 500.

The company, which has been selling phones under micro-finance in select rural markets, might just make a breakthrough in rural India’s mobile telephony.

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The web giant is looking a broadband wireless access, or BWA, in the country. It is alleged that the company might participate in the in the auction with an Indian partner.

As an alternative, Google could be just a technology partner to a telecom service provider. Foreign companies can buy up to 74 per cent equity in such a venture.

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According to most top management executives in India – the respondents of the survey conducted by CellStrat, a mobile consulting and technology strategy firm, around 53 per cent of the survey respondents said that this will be the case in 1-3 years, while only nine percent thought that it is already a mass market. This indicates a massive upside in production and consumption of mobile media over next 1-5 years.

Today there are a lot of questions vexing the CIOs and Marketing Managers in leading firms about mobile media. The ‘CellStrat Annual Mobile Media Survey – 2009′ is the first of its kind Market Research project in India, that intends to answer such questions by surveying the top innovative firms in the Indian marketplace as to what works and what doesn’t when it comes to mobile media.

The survey respondents were a mix of top management executives ranging from CEOs, MDs, VPs, GMs, Mobility Heads and Directors of top companies in India, from sectors ranging from Media, mobile, telecommunication, hi-tech, travel, hospitality, BFSI, education, to retail, healthcare, automotive industry.

The survey also showed that majority (88 percent) of the executives access web on their mobiles. The primary mobile web usage by corporate executives is for browsing (74 percent) followed by search (59 percent) and directions (29 percent).