Not just all 'talk'

With innovation as the key agenda, the Indian handset industry is coming up with new features to attract users in urban and rural areas.

With over a dozen new inventions, the Indian handset industry has over the past 12 months gradually come of age and become innovative.

Take, for instance, the ‘Aurum’ handset from Tata Teleservices which has an ‘alert’ key. Acting as an alarm bell, this feature sends out a high-decibel ambulance wail, attracting attention of passers-by and comes in handy for people with a history of strokes (cardiac arrests) or in case of being mugged. Aurum was conceptualised and designed by Tata Tele, while its manufacturing was outsourced to Chinese original device manufacturer (ODM), Unicair.

“What can be better than a device that is a mobile phone (which a user always carries with him) and has an SOS option too?” asks Tata Teleservices (Maharashtra) Managing Director Mukund Govind Rajan.

FRESH FEATURES FOR MOBILE PHONES

• ‘Alert key’ to send an SOS 
• AM radio service to cater to the rural segment
• Large keypads and letters to help the elderly
• Access to commodity prices
• 30-40 hours standby time
• Designed to look like Lord Ganesha
• Modelled on the Nano car

Tata Tele’s other examples include the ‘Sumuka’ handset (designed to look like the elephant god Ganesha, with Ashtavinayak ringtones and Ganesha wall papers), ‘Anano’ (modelled on the car Nano) and the to-be-launched ‘Suave’ (with large-sized keypads and lettering to help the elderly and other features) are some of the recent innovations from the Tatas. The group has also developed a wireless EBAPX (private telephone exchange) for which it has filed a patent application.

“Innovation is the cornerstone of the handset industry. The market, being highly competitive and with users looking for value for money, any manufacturer without a strong innovation funnel would be left far behind,” opines Meridian Telecom (makers of ‘Fly’ brand handsets) CEO Prem Kumar.

Tata Tele’s ‘Radio Phone’ is a testimony to this. The model (again with Unicair) can access AM radio services — a first of its kind in India and also among CDMA phones in the world. This enables telecom users in rural and semi-urban locales to listen to radio services (as mobile phones are usually shipped with FM services that are available only in major cities).

Another noteworthy innovation is The MobileStore’s, Essar Group’s telecom retailing arm, mobile handset T-60. The model, launched under its private label ‘Ray’ is said to provide a near iPhone experience to users, but at just one-fifth the price.

Meanwhile, the rural markets too are seeing out of the box ideas from the handset industry. In May, Nokia launched phones that can access mandi (commodities market) prices, while companies like Spice Communications launched world’s lowest priced handset at Rs 599. “Even though, a successful innovation in India is replicated in other countries, making a successful product is not an easy affair,” according to Mukund Govind Rajan.

“A lot of things need to be right like forecasting the trends, conceptualising and designing the handsets for the specific market. Getting any of these wrong can be hazardous, as operators will be stuck with inventory,” he adds.

Prem Kumar concurs: “If we make a successful product, the rewards are also high as with over 10 million handsets sold every month, India is one of the biggest telecom markets in the world.”

However, the biggest innovation needed for the rural Indian market is “long standby times”, according to Lava International — a handset maker gearing-up to start operations in India — Director, Sunil Bhalla. With competition now shifting to rural India, companies like the Tatas, Fly, Lava, Ray and multinational majors like Nokia, Samsung and Ericsson have launched phones with a standby time of around 30-40 hours.

Intel gets into mobiles; Nokia into PCs

They tried it twice earlier, but failed. This time around, however, Intel's collaboration with Nokia to introduce its processors in mobiles made by the world's largest handset maker is being viewed as a win-win situation. Intel is the world’s largest chipmaker but has not been able to get its chips into mobile phones.

But it makes the silicon that powers the world’s personal computers or PCs — a space where Nokia does not exist. Nokia’s ARM chip architecture provides a very power-efficient chip architecture, but it cannot match the performance of Intel processors.

Hence, rather than being direct competitors, collaboration makes more sense, say analysts. For Intel this is a much need endorsement of its Atom chipset and its applicability to mobiles, according to Adam Leach, device principal analyst at Ovum. For Nokia, it is an opportunity to explore new types of mobile broadband devices and ensure its smartphone offerings are not sidelined by manufactures entering from the PC market, he adds.

Intel’s Atom platform was developed for mobile Internet devices or MIDs, netbooks and smartphones. Now it can build 3G into its chipsets too. Nokia, on its part, will license 3G to Intel which is a potential revenue stream.