Sukshma

I have been eyeing a new phone to replace my existing Nokia 6230 for a while now. I finally caved in and bought a brand new Nokia E61i from the Nokia priority dealer in the Pune city area today.

My last smart phone was a BlackBerry 7100. The phone was tuned for e-mail like other BlackBerry’s. However, the 7100 fit well in my jeans since RIM managed to squeeze in two alphabets for every key. Setting up GMail on the BlackBerry was a breeze and did not require additional tweaks. Using the proprietary BlackBerry network, my desktop Outlook contact book always stayed in sync with my BlackBerry. I could even charge my BlackBerry over USB - a feature that was extremely handy when I traveled overseas.

The BlackBerry 7100 (and later models) are killer e-mail devices because they do the following extremely well.

• push e-mail
• new e-mail notification
• a huge local e-mail cache with search
• a complete contact book to store names, phone numbers and e-mail addresses
• keep your e-mail, desktop contact book and calendar in sync without cables
• the ability to modify your “sent from”
• auto configure access to GMail and other popular personal e-mail providers

However, without the BlackBerry network, it is next to impossible to provide the functionality listed above. Joining the BlackBerry network in India costs Rs. 2000 a month which is by no means priced for individuals. In comparison, AirTel GPRS costs Rs. 350 a month with no caps on how much data you can transfer. Additionally, we decided to avoid Microsoft Exchange and opt for Google apps for our office e-mail infrastructure. Until and unless you plan to be on the BlackBerry network, a BlackBerry might not be a good fit.

There are several phones that compete fairly in the general smart phone category. I had a serious look at Samsung i600 (~Rs. 18,500), Nokia E62 (~Rs. 12,500). The Nokia E61i was the final winner primarily because it is based on the very stable Symbian OS. Also, it is an improvement over the earlier (tried and tested) Nokia E61 and was launched in May 2007. In terms of features and connectivity options the E61i is comparable to other phones in the category.

The Nokia E61i costs a little north of Rs. 18,850 here in India. Additional charges including VAT apply. In my conversation with the dealer, he claimed that Nokia phones have only a 1% retail margin and therefore credit card charges would be over and above the price of the phone (an additional 2%). Unlike the US, additional discounts are not offered by carriers. You usually end up paying the full cost of the phone and having a zero commitment contract.

The phone comes in a box with a battery charger, a single battery, a memory card (microSD) of 256MB, a pop port headset and a CA-53 data cable. The Nokia CA-53 data cable happens to be the most popular data cable as far as duplication by after-market vendors. I have attached a screen shot of the cable to help identify the real thing. Fake Nokia CA-53 cables never work as intended.

I will be looking to get the best out of the phone in the coming weeks and promise to highlight some of the best applications available out there.

Related Links and Credits:

• A blog dedicated to the Nokia E series.
• The E61i pictures were taken by e61isuperfan on flickr.

Siddharth Mahajan, CEO of Seven thinks so.

From the article,

“We believe it’s going to be mobile e-mail’s year,” said Siddharth Mahajan, vice president and general manager of Seven Asia-Pacific. “We are putting all the right structures in place to help the market grow and hopefully we’ll see the results coming in Q3 or Q4 this year.”

…
“We see an evolution of the [mobile] e-mail market starting with enterprises,” Mahajan said. “But at the same time, we also see a growing trend where a growing number of users would like to get access to their IMAP and POP e-mail accounts from the mobile phone.”

Like previous versions, the Consumer Edition push e-mail application will allow users to send and receive e-mail on handsets from different vendors, said Mahajan. Users will also be able to read, edit, re-send e-mail attachments, and maintain always-on access to their calendar and contacts when on the move, he added.

However, Mahajan noted that while the mobile e-mail is immensely popular North America, it still ranks a distant second behind text-based short messaging (SMS) applications in Asia.

He conceded that it is probably due to the fact that “text messaging is a popular messaging application across Asia”, though he expects mobile e-mail to strike a chord with the business crowd.

“As far as business communication goes, your e-mail is important,” Mahajan explained. “You can’t close business deals using SMS. The moment you want to get into a formal type of communication, you need to use e-mail.”

The senior Seven executive was also bullish about mobile e-mail’s chances in developing countries like India and China. Citing India as an example, Mahajan noted that the number of e-mail users outnumber the number of PCs in the country, which could give operators an opportunity to showcase the virtues of mobile e-mail.

“We believe there is going to be a huge demand for mobile e-mail in this segment. India has probably an estimated 150 million email users but only 50 million computers,” observed Mahajan. “That clearly shows that a lot of the e-mail users are actually using Internet cafes or office PCs to access their email accounts.”

Mahajan said for this group of consumers without access to a PC, the ability to communicate and type e-mail messages using the mobile phone will be an “attractive factor”.

ZDNet Asia - “Seven: This will be mobile e-mails year“.

Sounds like his reasoning is way off target. So far my own bet has been not on mobile e-mail, but on mobile entertainment.

When you take a serious look at the 100 million users of the internet that Mr. Mahajan talks about, a few assumptions come to light.

The typical westernized solution that companies like Seven could offer through carriers includes a typical monthly service fee at around USD 20 per month. This includes unlimited e-mail access and the ability to add one or more POP and IMAP accounts. On the move, the consumer can get access to either a push-based e-mail solution or an on-demand e-mail solution. Personally, to me such a price wouldn’t seem very right - until and unless Seven had a creative model and a cheap solution to change that in India.

What problem can mobile e-mail solve for that user segment?According to him, they don’t own a PC, and yet they have access to their e-mail through work, and cyber-cafes. In other words, these users answer their personal e-mail when they would like to. It wouldn’t hurt if they went a few days without answering their e-mail.

E-mail happens to be a relatively formal activity when compared to SMS. However, they both thrive on the network effect. In the USA, all my friends had active e-mail lives. I knew I could count on near instant replies. In contrast, My friends here in India, who have limited access to the Internet don’t expect me to reply to e-mails in an instant. SMS on the other hand is a totally different culture. I am almost always expected to reply. Even if I could compose an e-mail to my friends while on the move, I know that they would not reply immediately. Turning behaviour around would be Seven’s (and other personal e-mail providers’) greatest challenge.

I think e-mail is a great feature to have if you have already subscribed to mobile data, I can’t be sure if many folks like me will want it turned on just for e-mail’s sake. In any case, I could still get a custom solution from my e-mail provider rather than rely on Seven.

Trends are clearly indicating a device with data (connectivity) is just as precious as a device with voice for many different reasons!

T-Mobile customers in the US are trading up from ordinary phones to the BlackBerry pearl. The BlackBerry Internet Service is a primary driver of this trend. It allows users to receive their personal e-mail instantaneously on their handhelds. It is very easy to setup and works well with GMail, Yahoo! and other free e-mail providers.

How repeatable is this trend in India? Yesterday, as I walked with the crowds in Mumbai, I could not help notice the number of folks who were carrying data-enabled handsets, for example - the Nokia 6030, 6230 and so on. I promise more on that later. It looks like there is a sizeable customer segment just waiting for the right spark to flip the demand for mobile data services.

At the Dadar ST bus stand - vendors (street) were selling cheap versions of mobile FM receivers with headsets. This is an oh-so obvious prediction - Mobile Entertainment, Television, Movies will be the next big wave to carry mobile data services into India. Perhaps not e-mail.

Bollywood films are now a click-away.

Regional content to drive rural mobile market.

3G GSM Summit Held in Mumbai with a Focus on Ecosystem around Mobile Value Added Services.

BlackBerry pearl proves consumers want smartphones - Fast Company.

T-Mobile has this to report about it’s BlackBerry Pearl users:

• Nearly 3 out of 4 T-Mobile customers who upgraded to a BlackBerry Pearl traded up from a regular phone, rather than another converged device.
• The majority of T-Mobile customers using the BlackBerry Pearl are using it for personal e-mail rather than staying connected to corporate servers.
• Approximately 80% of all T-Mobile Blackberry Pearl customers to date have signed up for BlackBerry Internet Service only, to take advantage of personal e-mail accounts like gmail, Yahoo! mail, etc. (rather than Blackberry Enterprise Service for corporate e-mail).
• 96% of T-Mobile Pearl customers send personal e-mail from their device weekly.

More trends on Sukshma.

Some time this year, the plug was finally pulled on the web service TeamOn.com. The service was backed by web startup TeamOn systems and a competitive, fast-paced team in its peak years 1999 - 2002. I joined them fresh out of college as a software developer with an overseas, outsourced team. TeamOn was acquired by RIM in August 2002, on the downside of the dot com blow out.

Do forgive the sentiment, this post is in remembrance. TeamOn was my first taste of startup life, business, and technology.

TeamOn had an e-mail aggregator way back in 2000 - users could aggregate their hotmail, AOL, MSN, CS2000, RPA, POP3, IMAP e-mail all in one teamon account. GMail has that feature in place now under “Get mail from other accounts”.

TeamOn had a hosted e-mail solution in place. You could have teamOn receive, store and send all e-mail for a domain you owned.

TeamOn also had virtual folders, conversations, document store and a bunch of other pretty cool features.

Here is a screenshot of a pretty old version.

Update: Here is what one customer has to say about AirTel’s BlackBerry service in India and the BlackBerry Pearl.

1. Email service on airtel.blackberry.com id is unreliable, as there is “no server” where to push emails from! I bought my Pearl in Dec-2006 and have lost most emails when the helpline tried to re-configure after my email send-and-receive stopped for some reason.

2. Trackball was beautiful, but since couple of weeks, scrolling has become erratic for me. Sometimes, upward scrolling does not work, and at other times, scroll to left fails. If the problem cannot be solved and the instrument has to be replaced, it takes about 15 days (in Bangalore).

3. Airtel and BB support has been poor, whether on phone or email. Calls get dropped, and they don’t stretch to call back or follow up, beyond an immediate and annoying customer-satisfaction sms. “Call volumes are high” is the standard response. Requests get “closed” though customer still faces problems, and if serious complaints are raised, the call is either dropped or you are told that a remark has been raised in their systems (whose wording, of course, bears scant resemblance to the issue at hand.

4. Blackberry Prosumer (tariff) Plan for data can get switched to Rs.899 plan even if you’ve signed up for the 499 one. You’re told to get company approval, though it’s a personal phone. Bills and collection followup via sms, manual calls, automated calls, etc., gets done 3-4 times daily by different agencies … to a point that outgoing calls are cut. It’s happened to me while on holiday with family in Mumbai, for a fault that Airtel+BB committed.

5. Other than for music, ringtones, pic, and video, files can neither be saved from within BB (even if it’s attached to email) nor viewed (when not attached to an email).

More later …
Regards,
— Vinit

The BlackBerry Pearl has been retailing in India for a while now and costs approximately Rs. 25,000 (as stated on CNN-IBN - Tech2.0). Strangely, I have not seen much of it on TV, Print and other media. The AirTel site does not list the Pearl either. Update: You can now watch the BlackBerry Pearl promoted on almost all the premium info TV channels.

The Pearl was featured this weekend on CNN-IBN’s Tech 2.0. While the shows review was not a detailed one (they enlisted a few strengths and weaknesses of several e-mail phones) you can find a detailed review on the tech2 web-site. Tech2 cited the Nokia E61 to be the closest competitor the BlackBerry Pearl 8100. In their own words, the Nokia E61 is a “BlackBerry Killer”. The Nokia E61 retails at Rs. 17,500. If your concerned about continuing to get your BlackBerry e-mail and are wondering if you can upgrade, the Nokia E61 can be used to grab BlackBerry e-mail. The E61 ships with BlackBerry Connect software that you can use to get your BlackBerry e-mail from your BlackBerry network.

Update: The E61 is being sold as the Nokia E62 in the USA. Business week has a short review of the phone.

More on the blackberry on Sukshma.

Google’s chief - Eric Schmidt speaks about the silver bullet in business - partnerships. Eric is usually rather honest in his interviews which is what makes them so interesting to read.

The new technology thrust that is unravelling is in terms of video online, Search, Exchange, Edit, Annotate, Popularize, Promote name it there is a web 2.0 site out there that is doing it. Google themselves are partnering with MTV.

Google’s chief looks ahead.

From the Bigger Boat site,

Entertainment isn’t what it used to be. From big media company blockbusters to two minute videos created by individuals armed with an imagination and a camera, entertainment comes in many forms. Much of it now targets the individual instead of the masses. With so many services competing for our attention, we find ourselves asking, “Does it work on my iPod?, Is this the free version with ads?, Can I burn this to disc?” While the Internet gives us access to much of this content, there hasn’t been a simple way to find and filter it.

BiggerBoat gives people a better way to search and discover entertainment. From the top of the charts to the long-tail of consumer generated content, we’re developing a resource that gives consumers an accurate picture of what’s out there. We’re doing this by creating a single powerful Index of information coming from a variety of sources - the freely available Web; members-only services; and information that you just can’t get anywhere on the Internet, until now.