3G big-bang will blind the industry within three years, says Nokia India CEO

Mobor: Delivery of services is set to see a sea change within the next two - three years, with the introduction of 3G in India, which will allow services as varied as movies, banking, health care, education or entertainment to be delivered quite differently to they way it is done today.

Predicting the future during his address at the GoaFest 2008 Ad Conclave, Nokia India CEO D Shivkumar said, ''I can already see it happening; the question is whether you, as advertising agencies, are gearing up for 3G.''

''If you think YouTube is big, wait till you see 3G explode. Today, cinema in India is limited to Bollywood, Tamil and Bengali films. With 3G in place, what will stop a person from just about anywhere, make a documentary in his regional language, and send it directly to the target audience? The possibilities are immense,'' asserted Shivkumar.

Backing up his statements with hard facts, Shivkumar said that in the first five years of mobile telephony in the country, and with incoming calls charged at Rs14 per minute, the subscriber base had crossed 22 million.

Over the next five years, he said, it boomed to 207 million, and is now expected to touch 500 million by 2010. Effectively, this will mean that mobile phones would have reached 45 per cent of the country's population. The 500 million phones, he said, can be further broken into the following categories based on their capabilities for video, music, radio, photography (camera enabled), and Internet connectivity.

Broadening the perspective further, Shivkumar said, ''India is a country like no other. It will have a unique growth path and a discontinuous one at that.'' He said that it took India 62 years to become the 12th largest economy in the world with a GDP of one trillion. The second trillion is expected to come along by the year 2015.

If the first trillion was about fulfilling basic needs, substitution and cutting costs, which makes up the ''LopZee'' (low price zero experience era), then the second trillion will be about fulfilling aspirations, wants and desires, he observed.

''The rich buy brands for vanity, while the poor buy brands for security. Hence, whichever way you look at it, building brands will become more relevant in the near future,'' Shivkumar reasoned. Using numbers once again, Shivkumar showed how India is moving in the right direction towards becoming a developed economy. Data on consumer spend in India over a seven year span from 2000 to 2007, shows that Food and Beverages has reduced from 51.5 per cent to 42.7 per cent; clothes and foot wear from 5.3 per cent to 4.5 per cent; rent and utilities has grown from 11.4 per cent to 12 per cent; transport has jumped from 13.1 per cent to 17.5 per cent; medical has stagnated at 4.4 per cent, and recreation and education has gone up from 3.4 per cent to 4.2 per cent.

''With the figures telling a story, and government policy pointing in the same direction, the sectors to watch in India as I see can be narrowed down to ETC (Entertainment & Education, Transport and communication),'' he said.

Summing up his sermon to the ad-men, Shivkumar said it could well be worth its while for an advertising agency to keep a keen eye for emerging technology, trends and new markets to stay afloat in a dynamic and competitive ecosystem.