Mobile broadband is yet to enter India in a big way but it seems there is a strong latent demand already for such services in the country. IDC’s first-ever study in analyzing Data Card and USB Modem shipments highlights that the sales for these products were at 0.405 million for the April-June 2009 quarter.
The surge in demand especially in the last six months is due to increasing need of professionals to stay connected while being mobile. Enterprise email communication, corporate applications and personal communication including online transactions an entertainment are seen sfueling the demand for such products.
The shipments in July-September 2008 were at 0.176 million. While in the July-Sep’ 08 quarter it was found that 25 % of the notebooks sold had data card or USB modem the number increased to 80 % by April-June’09 quarter.
In terms of technological platform, the present scenario shows that CDMA service providers are dominating the space with almost 69 % share of the market. This is logical because CDMA enables operators to offer better speeds as compared to GSM operators who are forced to offer inferior speeds over 2G network. Things might change after entry of 3G.
Prices of these products are likely to come down from the current average price of Rs 3,000 thereby assisting in pushing mobile broadband.
IDC says that while the current ecosystem witness’s data cards and USB modems being bundled with service providers’ offerings, the scenario might change and allow open data cards to be available allowing end-users to not only chose their service provider but also the preferred data card.
India Data Card and USB Modem Market Sales (Shipments): ’000s of units, % growth
Naveen Mishra, Senior Analyst, Communications Research, IDC India says, “Going forward we expect convergence to affect USB modems, whereby these devices will not only be used for Internet connectivity but also increasingly for data storage, music (MP3 player) and FM (Radio).”
“USB modems may also see usage as a mobile phone in future avatars as companies experiment with new applications,” adds Naveen.
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