India telecom and China telecom: Similar, but Different

Mohammad Chowdhury
Updated: Apr 24, 2013 08:04:47 AM UTC

Preparing a CEO briefing recently for a leader who wanted to understand how China and India stack up, it struck me that the two industries today share a common challenge.  Just look at the graph below, and you’ll see that both markets are at a point where the revenue growth rate has converged on the low-teens %, while subscriber growth is about to dip into single figures.

Picture-1-for-India-vs-China-1024x306

For the first time, both markets have an imperative to drive per subscriber revenue upwards to keep up with their shareholders’ growth expectations.  So, cutting beyond the clichés that often artificially couple these two economic giants together, now there may be real sense in Indian and Chinese telecom service providers engaging more purposefully in collaboration and innovation.

The fields of discussion should start with techniques to deminstrate to “mid-tier” users the benefits of mobile beyond simply making calls and sending texts.  Top-end users are already on board.  Whilst China has the advantage that much of its population read and write similar scripts, both markets have common challenges in driving data adoption, growing user confidence and awareness, giving more people value through mobile internet because fixed isn’t easily accessible, and giving people services which they really care about.

Example: both India and China have experimented with services aimed at farmers to provide crop and pricing information.  But mass uptake has been slowed down by an inability hitherto to aggregate and distil highly localised pricing information on a regular basis to subscribers in many locations.  Once the technology and process for data aggregation can be harnessed better wiih customer analytics, the value these pricing and crop information services provide could really shoot up.

Now look at the tables below and remember just how different the two countries are!

Picture-1-for-India-vs-China-1024x306

China’s economy and its telecom sector are roughly six times the size of India’s but more importantly, GDP/capita in China is four times as high.  While there is a common challenge of exciting the mid-tier, marketing officers in Shanghai and Beijing will have to create different sets of services and offerings compared to those in Gurgaon and Mumbai.   While there is clearly an opportunity for collaboration, success in each market will continue to require content and services which address the needs of users with different and distinct needs.

Similar, but different.

The thoughts and opinions shared here are of the author.

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