Category — Telecommunications

In ten years, the Indian economy has more than quadrupled in size from $422 billion in 2001 to $2 trillion in 2012. Moreover, India’s GDP per capita has more than trebled from under $500 in 2002 to now crossing $1,700.

According to LV Krishnan, CEO of TAM Media research, “Contribution of services has grown and manufacturing has dipped in relative terms. That’s the biggest change in the advertising world”.

TV has become the primary advertising  media today at 42% of annual spend compared to 37% in 2005.  Newspapers have a shrinking share of 39% (49% in 2005) and digital media is growing rapidly from 1% in 2005, to 6% of the total ad spend today. According to Tarun Abhichandani, group business director, e-Tech Group, IMRB International, it is important to remember that despite this shift, print is still growing in India at 11-12%.

Fnench telecommunications company Alcatel Lucent said its commitment to India remains unchanged even as the French telecom infrastructure firm has announced plans to reduce its global headcount by 5,000. “India is an important research and development center and market for Alcatel-Lucent globally. Our commitment to building India’s broadband infrastructure remains unchanged.”
The firm in July this year had said it would exit or restructure non-profitable markets to save 1.25 billion euros by the end of 2013. The company had also announced a series of measures to reduce its costs after it reported a net loss of 254 million euros in Q3 2012. Its revenues during the quarter declined by 7.1 per cent at 3.5 billion euros compared to 3.8 billion euros a year ago. The company employs 10,000 people in India and manages half of fixed and CDMA wireless lines in the country.

Information Technology  spending in India is projected to total $71.5 billion in 2013, a 7.7 percent increase from the $66.4 billion forecasted for 2012, according to Gartner, Inc. India like other emerging markets continues exercising strong momentum despite inflationary pressures and appreciation of local currencies, which are expected in rising economies.

The telecommunications market is the largest IT segment in India with IT spending forecast to reach $47.8 billion in 2013 (see Table 1), followed by the IT services market with spending of $10.3billion. The computing hardware market in India is projected to reach $9.5 billion in 2013, and software spending will total nearly $4.0 billion. Software will record the strongest revenue growth at 15 percent, IT services will grow at 12 percent. The telecom segment, which accounts for 67 percent of the Indian ICT market, is set to grow at 7 percent revenue growth in 2013:

What this means:

For foreign companies, which are more free to operate in India than in markets such as China, India will continue to be a good market.

SRS Labs (NASDAQ:SRSL), based in Santa Ana, California  a leader in surround sound, audio enhancement, and voice post-processing technologies, announced an agreement with Karbonn Mobiles, a leading Mobile brand and provider of attractively priced multimedia phones in India.

According SRS,  its Wow-HW technology improves the dynamic audio performance of compressed and uncompressed audio by expanding the size of the audio image and creating a deep, rich bass response. The patented techniques in SRS WOW HD widen the horizontal sound field and raise the vertical sound image, retrieving information lost in the mixing process to create a more natural audio experience. “With this partnership, SRS continues to expand its global presence in one of the world’s fastest-growing mobile markets,” said  Bob Lyle, Vice President of Mobile Products Group at SRS Labs.

I recently came across an interesting piece of technology that crossed over from outer space to rural India.

The guideVue system was originally developed by Dr. Sriram Iyengar and his colleagues at the University of Texas – Houston with funding from NASA, who was looking for a better way for astronauts to receive physical care while in space. It was while brainstorming other applications for guideVue that Dr. Iyengar realized that “there is something very common about deep space and the rural areas of earth.” Dr. Iyengar recognized that, just as guideVue can help improve care for an astronaut tens of thousands of miles away from health facilities on Earth, it can improve care for a patient located in a rural area, a hundred miles from the closest facility. Specifically, guideVue can help address problems resulting from the lack of trained physicians in rural areas, the lack of standardized training for frontline rural health providers, and poor internet connectivity.

The software product is a clinical decision support suite that can be used on computers, mobile phones, and tablets. Using this technology, frontline health workers with only basic training will be able to more accurately diagnose and treat patients suffering from a whole range of illnesses or afflictions.

The guideVue system consists of computer program which allows healthcare specialists to easily create complicated decision trees, making use of text, images, video, and audio in a large number of languages (they are in the process of developing support for non-Roman script languages). The program is specifically designed so that anyone with basic knowledge of computers and phones can use it. Once completed, the decision tree can easily be saved in a number of formats so that it can be uploaded onto an iPhone,  Android tablet, or several other devices. It is made to run inside the device itself so that there is no need for internet connectivity, an advantage in remote regions.

Healthcare workers in India learning how to use the guideVue system

Here is a marketing video about broad application of the product.