Monthly Archives: June 2010

Telemarketing in India: Growing menace

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TRAI has admitted this to be a failure. This is expected from a frigging dumb ass moron who is eating away the taxpayers money like a termite without showing anything positive on their records. One cannot but act helpless, especially when one gets a string of unsolicited messages.

By it’s very definition, these messages are “unwelcome”. No one wants them. No one has ever requested for them. Yet, they stream in with a renewed vigor. I had planned some sort of RTI against them to be petitioned in TRAI. Yet, I am aware of the limitations on my time and the fact that one needs immense amount of patience for such a task. The way out has been by one feisty lady named Nivedita Sharma who has acted against these telecom operators. The cat is out of the bag. It is clear that all these numbers are leaked out in the databases. The fuckers who claim innocence are the ones who are worst culprits.

It isn’t brilliant journalism. Yet, kudos to Outlook (to some extent), that they carried out the lead story on the telemarketing calls. Unsolicited messages is supposed to be 50,000 crore industry (and growing)…by what estimates? it seems to be a simple premise. The more one casts the net wide, there is bound to be bunch of suckers who would fall for the “ravishing offers”. I am surprised that pimps of all hues have not yet started marketing their “massage services” as yet! Again I am surprised that Outlook has not bothered to check for the lucrative advertisement deals which come licking up the industry “executives”. Or the media managers. Or that their subscription is pits and pathetic and only a certain section of demography reads it.

Who knows.

Yet, the picture of Sarna isn’t awe inspiring. The pose set is clearly reflective of the intellectual and moral rot in the system. And these bureaucrats are a representative of such a system.

I am also linking to the Delhi High Court judgement (pdf) which I came across. See if it makes sense for anyone to file a class action suit in the consumer court. I can, but I need time to do it.

Smartphones: The next wave of computing?

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There can be no easy answer to this. Both the Android and Apple iPhone OS are competing for mind space and increasingly green bucks from the paying customer. Both of them have “redefined” the word “cool” and increasingly, the focus has shifted on to advertising platforms. This is because the hardware doesn’t matter but advertising is a lucrative revenue stream provided that there is a critical mass of the people willing to utilize and absorb the product in daily use.

According to Neilsen survey (here), both Android and Apple iPhone are increasing their market share. It was in news recently that Apple had increased it’s market capitalization as compared to Microsoft and overtook it for a good measure. Steve Ballmers reaction was subdued even though he crowed that it is Desktop that matters the most. The debate has shifted to cloud computing; whether it is relevant in the present context and whether people would shift their loyalties. Smart phones have becomes means to access the cloud; either by applications (sandboxed for a good measure so that it doesn’t crash the OS), or by browsers.

Here in, Android and Apple iphone OS is leading the mindspace. Since the pictures in the Neilsen survey are under copyright, I cannot copy and paste them; but it is clear that traditional players are loosing the space. Blackberry is jaded and crap dip shit hiked prices make no sense; specially when they want to crack the Indian market. in a similar vein, Android is focused on the American market because thats the place where SOME action is taking place. Nokia isn’t a surprise omission because it’s symbian OS as a platform for a smart phone is ham handed by serious lack of apps.Those assholes need a bummer up their ass to make the phones more worthwhile because dip shit policies don’t work. Having a broad range of compatibility with the different email service providers is good but to make a phone “interesting” and “must have” needs hard work and a marketing muscle.

Coming back to the original question. Can the smartphone be the next wave of computing? Is the day of the laptop or the netbook numbered? It isn’t so because these are different ways of accessing the same thing. Ways and means matter. End don’t.

What does it mean for Indian consumer? It means nothing. Because the smart phone market is limited to a minuscule percentage of people who would perhaps drive the value added service associated with impending 3G (or any of it’s avatars). Which means Data. The network operators are going to ration the resource because it has been claimed that a regular tom dick or harry doesn’t need the bandwidth as compared to “top 5% of the users” who “clog the network”. It is the regular tom dick and harry who need “enough bandwidth” to access their email.

Fact of the matter is that in absence of a decent option, smart phones in India are more likely to remain a “show off”; much more like the “object of desire” whose utility is of questionable value.

Uninor India: Poor pre sales response!

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I had emailed to the “newest” and latest kid on the block, Uninor India ( you can check out their home page here). Apart from being Flash intensive, Uninor does not seem to offer any real differentiator.

In true interests of providing them a fair ground, I had emailed them couple of days back to ask them about their strategy to expand in India given the stiff competition in various circles. The market is already saturated (I still wonder how do they conjure up numbers for “millions”) and whether the potential really exists or not.

There has been no response from the email id listed in their website. I personally feel that none of the telecom companies wish to actively engage bloggers. Neither they are interested in any independent verification of their stated claims. This too is a humbling thought because had it been affiliated to mainstream media house, they would have licking my feet :)

Yet the regular readers of the blog are aware of my antipathy to the mainstream media houses. I have stood against their stated principles and their motivations. Neither I am interested in strapping on their published press releases which reads like a crap dip shit literature.

I still invite any one from Uninor to please clear the air about themselves and use this platform to disseminate information about themselves. It would be interesting to reach out to the possible target audience by means of social networking sites, twitter and blogs. A company that responds in a poor pre sales manner, is likely to do so after sales too. Unless, they wish to correct this perception!