Mistakes Amazon made while positioning their new Fire phone.

A long period of guessing, speculations, leaks and lies came to an end when Amazon revealed its Fire phone this week. Now is the time to match the hype with features of the phone.

Here are some points, why I feel that Amazon has made mistakes while positioning their Fire phone in the smart phone market.
Fire OS vs Android vs iOS
Till now, Kindle fire has worked well and proved as a successful product in satisfying customers need but Kindle was positioned as an e-book reader and that’s why it was successful in creating a different space for itself and managed to stand apart from tablets or OS’ war. Now Amazon is entering in pure competition with other smartphones as well as OS’ and now Fire OS has to compete with other established OS’ like iOS and android not only in performance but in their apps strength, where it certainly lacks.

Apps
iOS and Android have a large apps base ranging over 1,000,000 while Fire as only 230,000 apps and number of apps supporting 3D feature is very low and that may be a drawback. So, in terms of services they are not offering or solving any existing problem. If they don’t come up with strong apps solution it will merely become an e-commerce phone.

Pricing
Amazon is known for their different pricing strategy, they want user to use their devices and then generate revenue. For that they offer device in lesser price and same strategy worked well with Kindle. For Fire phone they have introduced 32 GB and 64 GB variants and they are not offering 16 GB. Though their price for 32 GB is less than 32 GB iPhone price but they are not offering 16 GB. So, starting price for iPhone and Fire is same as 16 GB iPhone is same as 32 GB Fire. That’s why they are almost missing the opportunity to position their product as a less price offering than iPhone and S5.
May be after starting sales results, they come with 16 GB variant.

Vishwa Ratna Nigam
Telecom & Mobile Analyst

Reliance Jio 4G: A ray of hope to build connected living services market in India.

Reliance Jio is finally ready to enter in India’s telecom industry and not only entering but it’s taking india to a next level technology that is 4G.


4G technology has already been tested in some metropolitan cities in India but still 4G is a tommorow’s technology for India. Now, when Reliance is entering into the market, what should we expect and what can they offer? It will be interesting see.

India has grown in terms of penetration and applications are also attracting users but still almost 85% of the telecom revenue comes from voice usage and call rates are declining continuously. Therefore telcos are also facing troubles in terms of maintaining their revenue. In voice and data usage pattern, India is not matching foot with western world yet, where data is becoming more prominent source of Telco revenue.

There are many reasons behind voice portion being prominent source of revenue in Indian market, as users in rural India are mostly voice users and they have basic- feature phones. So, they are not data users.

Another reason behind less data usage in India is that Telcos are not investing or looking into connected living services as next revenue source. In US AT&T and Verizon are providing full suite of home care services for remote monitoring and remote automation. Many western operators are providing mHealth services for Diabetes management and monitoring, HIV/AIDS help/information services and heart related services etc.

These services are mainly data based and it can be a source of huge revenues for telcos, who are struggling to match their past revenues due to lower call rates and low data usage.

Reliance is entering in the market with 4G, which can fulfill technology gap and create suitable environment for connected living services and it can be expect by an operator of reliance’s measure only to start investing in new dimensions.

So, if Reliance starts focusing on this area, we can expect some really exciting and helpful services in Indian telecom market also.

Vishwa Ratna Nigam
Telecom and Mobile Analyst