In FY14, India is going to be at a very critical inflection point as we transition from 2G to 4G. FY13 for the digital and mobile economy has been one of the most challenging years for us, driven by all kinds of regulatory challenges and telecom companies going through their hyper competitiveness, we are beginning to see a change here. The first of that is that we are moving away from voice to data based services. This could possibly also see us evolve into new revenue models.
Although, I do believe that the kind of models that we have witnessed in the west, which are predominantly advertising funded etc. will find it extremely challenging in india and will need to co-opt with the telecom eco system to build alternate and robust eco systems. I think the manner in which video consumption is on the rise is going to be, in my mind, another big trend in FY14. We are already seeing services like youtube etc. being accessed by as much as 35-40% through mobile phones and over the next couple of years this could be as much as 80-90%. The third big area for me is going to be the proliferation of smartphones in india.
I think India will move in FY14 somewhere in the range of 55-60 million smartphone devices will be sold out of the 200+ million overall phones and I think you will start seeing tablets also emerging into the market at some 100 dollar kind of price lines. I think the fourth area is going to be about how we look at content. I believe made for digital content programming will start seeing early signs of adoption. This will happen via brands and this ought to also happen a lot from conventional creative programming, whether they be broadcasters, whether they be film studios, there is a lot of desire for content that is not the standard two and a half hour film or the thirty minute, twenty five minute television program, but what goes on behind. And I think makers of content will melt from actually looking at this space.
And lastly in my mind, the entire component of what artists can do, both with social media as well as with engaging with brands and consumers will see another tipping point. My sense is india will move from 150 million consumers to close to 600 million consumers on the digital landscape in the next 4 years. The only caveat in all this is we are moving from a secure mobile economy, which had a pale ecosystem, to the open world of the internet.
And if all stakeholders, which includes the content community to a great extent, do not enable the right robust paid ecosystem, then I believe the market will be looking at this as a missed opportunity and I think we should do everything possible to try and make sure that we do not let that happen. India is one of those markets where this could possibly be setting the trend for whatevers happening in the rest of the world.
So I’m wishing all of us a happy FY14, but like I said with a little bit of caution and a little bit of co-opting amongst all of us to ensure that we build what would be a robust economy for all of us to cherish.
