Posted on July 19, 2007, at 10:42 am .
On top of a projected cellular market worth 25$ billion by 2011, Gartner predicts that data’s chunk of the Indian pie will have increased from 9.6% last year to 22%. Obviously voice still takes the lion’s share of the market, but the demand for data services is accelerating very quickly, which is good news for RIM. Prepaid customers will be more likely to get a data plan than post-paid users, and keeping prices down will be vital for success in India.
See what a Gartner analyst has to say on the price issue.
Posted on July 10, 2007, at 8:02 am .
RIM COO Don Morrison had a chat with the Financial Post on Friday, and voiced his confusion over Canadian wireless costs. In a nutshell, he doesn’t understand why rates are so high when it works in carriers’ best interests to appeal to a mass market with low rates, as demonstrated by massive growth in Europe and elsewhere. Google’s director of global public policy Andrew McLaughlin agrees wholeheartedly, citing a lack of Canadian activity on Google’s mobile services. It’s kind of perverse that BlackBerry has a decent adoption rate everywhere else but where it was made, and the Post brought up a solid point: maybe the government should step in to make wireless competition more viable and push prices down. In light of Harper’s stance on the Telus’ Bell bid, the possibility of federal intervention seems unlikely, though not impossible. Ideally, carriers would take a hint, but if there’s really no sign of rates letting up, maybe it is time for the feds to give Rogers, Telus and company a smack upside the head.
