With the growing popularity of mobile phones in India…
…the usage of mobile, tablet and desktop apps is on the rise. With 975 million mobile phone connections in India and penetration at 140 percent in urban areas, many e-commerce firms see apps as the way forward to push sales, with some even planning to make it their exclusive delivery platform. Mobile Apps are internet applications designed to run on smartphones and other mobile devices. Mobile applications help users by connecting them to Internet services more commonly accessed on desktop or notebook computers. Industry stakeholders feel mobile apps are the way forward. But they cannot be the sole medium. India has 100 million users of mobile data and this year has witnessed a huge jump in the number of Indian apps in the app stores.
Messaging has become an integral part of modern day lifestyle and Hike Messenger has clearly led the trend. With its localization focused stickers and better user acquisition strategies, Hike has been remarkable doing well since the past few months inspite the growth of Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp and Telegram.
Indians also appear to be doing lot of shopping on mobile. The top e-commerce sites have said that nearly a third of their sales are through their mobile apps. Convenience of browsing through products, simplified payment methods and synced profiles across platforms are the real drivers behind this shift from desktop to mobile. Changing trends in modern day lifestyle are fueling e-commerce and we expect mobile to play a bigger role in online sales.
Mobile money and wallets are still relatively new to Indian users. Paytm has also been adding more merchants daily with a marketplace of its own. Followed by cash back offers to attract more users and better integration, PayTm has emerged as the largest player in mobile wallets in India as of today. Their moves have been exceptional and well timed. Other players operating in this domain are Mobikwik, Citrus, zipcash, etc.
Music has always been special mobile category. The presence of Gaana and Saavn in our list is a testimony to the fact that more and more users are streaming music online and avoiding storing music on their smartphones. Many of the recent cheaper phones come without external storage support, which could be fueling online music streaming on mobile devices. Another interesting category that’s emerged over the last 2 years is cab aggregators. Ola has been the market leader with more than 60% market share followed by Taxiforsure and other radio cab operators including the likes of Meru, Tab, Airport Taxis, etc. Finally Bookymyshow and Zomato are the unicorns in the consumer internet domains and have become almost a must-have on most phone. While Bookmyshow has no big competitors, Burrp and Times City have been trying hard to overtake Zomato that has moved on to international markets now. However, the mobile apps implicate the following pitfalls too:-
1. Limitations
Since mobile devices have limited amount of storage and size of the products screen compared to computer, there are limitation of using apps. For examples, small display screen and overflow of data storage.
2. Accelerate Information Overload
Bulletin board advertising has been long rampant while not many people pay attention to those ads when passing by on their way. But mobile applications can make our mobile devices full of spam.
3. Privacy and Security
When downloading applications, users possibly have to allow the publishers to track and analyze their actions. This would give birth to the loss or abuse of personal information. On the other hand, one may get virus downloaded in mobile devices without being aware of it.
4.Costs of developing and marketing
The cost spending on developing apps is high for better quality of application. Since millions of mobile apps existing in the market, there is both huge time and financial cost to stand out from the fierce competition. Moreover, If spending on developing application is higher than the profits they earn, there will be deficiency.
