Google offering YouTube videos in offline mode in
Indian market was a masterstroke. It was like touching the nerve of an average
Indian user, irrespective of his social or economic status, geographical
location, literacy level or age. Surprisingly, for all kinds of mobile users in
India, whether in rural or urban areas, young or old, the price elasticity of
demand for data usage is quite high, meaning thereby that the amount of data
they use is very sensitive to the price they have to pay for it.
A large part of this high price elasticity is
psychological as people tend to minimize their monthly expenditure on data
plans they buy by resorting to means which are often not quite understandable.
After all, a young student switching off his data on his mobile phone when he
is watching a movie does not make any sense given that he does not even think
twice before spending 500 bucks for a single show in the multiplex and spending
another 200 on his popcorn bucket during interval. But it is also about
extremely high cost of data usage vis-à-vis the hourly wages in India in comparison
to many other developing countries that explains this kind of behaviour. A
comparison with developed economies, on the other hand would in fact make the
price of data usage in India appear prohibitively expensive.
Any app, if it has to be downloaded to make it
functional, has to be downloaded online. But, how much data an app will use
when it is being downloaded or when it is being used subsequently can put apps
in vastly different categories, and make an app more or less attractive to a
user who is sensitive about his data bill. The first differentiator is, of
course the app size; a user is generally put off when the app is more than a
certain size, and the size will depend on what kind of phone you are using,
whether it’s a high end phone or a cheap handset with cramped memory space. And
it’s a reality not worth ignoring by the app developers that a large majority
of handsets have low memory space and a user might get put off by an app even
of the size more than 8 to 10 MB.
The next differentiator is the data usage when the
app is being run for use. There are apps that do not require internet
connectivity at this stage or require connectivity for 50% of the time, so that
the rest of the time, the application is running on offline internet. This is a
kind of hybrid offline-online ecosystem, but it also means a trade-off has to
be made between how much data needs to be stored in the handset’s memory to
enable it to work to its full potential in an offline environment.
App developers who are economizing on the app
size may be gaining a crucial competitive edge here. And there are companies
which are addressing the size issues from a different strategy. Anant Computing
Platform, for instance, works on this fundamental idea of enabling development
of apps at almost one-tenth size of usual mobile applications, and they run
smoothly even offline. They facilitate development of apps that run perfectly
on low memory space phones.
The gen-next phones are most likely going to be
offline primarily, and it’s not an over-statement at all when Rajan Anandan,
Managing Director, Google India says that "India will be the world's
largest offline internet market" in the context of YouTube becoming
available offline in the Indian market.
There is a great potential here for app
developers who can harp on the idea of minimizing on the app size and making it
as much offline as possible in a largely hybrid environment.
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