From The Editor
The common link in all the mobile phone advertisements today from Idea, Airtel, Aircel, LG and Vodafone is that none emphasises what most customers think to be the core value of the product: making and receiving calls.
Abhishek Bachchan fancies using mobile phones to hold remote classrooms and as a voting device. Kareena wants Saif to stream her favourite song on her mobile. M.S. Dhoni shows how quick and clever he is in finding the best hotel and travel deals through his mobile phone. A petite girl effortlessly moves from playing music to a dice game on her touch phone. In a more subtle brand promotion, a pug does everything, from searching for the missing socks to fetching homework copy for his "master". The common link in all these-and many more such-mobile phone advertisements from Idea, Airtel, Aircel, LG and Vodafone is that none emphasises what most customers think to be the core value of the product: making and receiving calls. Instead, they are advertising Net access, music downloads, text messages, navigation and so on. In the world of mobile telephony, all this is known as "services" and is distinct from "voice".
Though mobile phone users still predominantly use their devices for calling, the trend is changing. And the rate of this change will accelerate in future. The reason is obvious: calling is only one form of communication.
SMS, e-mail, social media (Orkut, Twitter, Facebook), music and photo share are modes of communication, too. With changing times and demographic profiles, the non-call forms of communication will grow faster-and so will the "services" value of our mobiles. No wonder then, that Nokia's message of "connecting people" is increasingly more about things other than making a phone call. Two of the world's fastest-growing and most fancied mobile phone brands-iPhone and BlackBerry-have services as their key attraction. Services, then, seem to be the mobile industry's new frontier. Our cover story explains the logic and implications of this trend-for companies and for consumers.
In the season of job losses and salary cuts, managing human resources may seem easy-at least easier than it was in the past 3-4 years of scramble for talent. HR professionals and experts would tend to disagree. If a company ends up losing key people in the process of cost cutting, it won't thrive-or even survive-when the good times return. That's why the first BT-PeopleStrong India Attrition Study focusses on helping companies understand if they are losing the "right" people in the downturn (pg 80).
Globalisation isn't only about Indians consuming foreign products and services. As we show on pg 104, it's also about the interiors of Haryana and Himachal Pradesh producing the most exotic of Italian cheese and exporting it to the US.
- Rohit Saran
Though mobile phone users still predominantly use their devices for calling, the trend is changing. And the rate of this change will accelerate in future. The reason is obvious: calling is only one form of communication.
SMS, e-mail, social media (Orkut, Twitter, Facebook), music and photo share are modes of communication, too. With changing times and demographic profiles, the non-call forms of communication will grow faster-and so will the "services" value of our mobiles. No wonder then, that Nokia's message of "connecting people" is increasingly more about things other than making a phone call. Two of the world's fastest-growing and most fancied mobile phone brands-iPhone and BlackBerry-have services as their key attraction. Services, then, seem to be the mobile industry's new frontier. Our cover story explains the logic and implications of this trend-for companies and for consumers.
In the season of job losses and salary cuts, managing human resources may seem easy-at least easier than it was in the past 3-4 years of scramble for talent. HR professionals and experts would tend to disagree. If a company ends up losing key people in the process of cost cutting, it won't thrive-or even survive-when the good times return. That's why the first BT-PeopleStrong India Attrition Study focusses on helping companies understand if they are losing the "right" people in the downturn (pg 80).
Globalisation isn't only about Indians consuming foreign products and services. As we show on pg 104, it's also about the interiors of Haryana and Himachal Pradesh producing the most exotic of Italian cheese and exporting it to the US.
- Rohit Saran
