If you are a stats loving person, chances are that you already know that India is all set to cross the 500 million mark in mobile phone subscriptions in a year or two. That’s a hell of a lot of mobile phones for sure.
Competition has been fierce and innovation has been at its peak in the realm of mobile telephony in India. Case in point, we have the lowest call rates anywhere in the world and for that to happen, innovation was a prerequisite. SO much so, even home grown brands like Micromax, Lava, Karbonn are competing head to head with the Nokia’s and the Samsung’s to grab a share of the entire market and wonder of wonders, they have been successful. A glorious case study in entrepreneurship .
But with all this competition players have had to look at expanding their base, and India with its vast rural landscape
has set the next bastion for global telecom players battling it out in the Indian market. Telecom players are dreaming of that day when every Indian villager will have a cell phone in his hand , so what if basic amenities like water and food are still a far cry and by the looks of it, it seems pretty possible.
While price wars and handset innovations are driving the battle out for building the connectivity, cell phone players are now coming up with innovations that can be used as value added services by farmers to gain more productivity and it is here that social media driven mobile applications are being pushed into play.
SO while back in the city the talk may be around “Tom the Talking Cat” or other popular mobile / iPhone and iPad apps- for the villages a whole host of mobile apps are being developed and leading the fray here are Swedish major Nokia.
Nokia has for long made its vision clear that they want to dominate the Indian rural market and to bolster their talk quite recently they have launched an entire series of apps targeted at the Indian farmer on Ovi which is their mobile app store.
So what do these apps do? Well from the claims of it these apps are programmed to give real time information about weather, market prices and other tips and tricks for sowing crops . Not only that – these apps are also programmed in vernacular languages so that they can break the language barrier and have in built educational modules where one can learn basic English, General Knowledge and get updates on National Exam results . Realistically enough Nokia has christened this entire module as Ovi Life Tools.
image Source Nokia.com
SO what does Ovi Life tools do?
- See market prices, agricultural tips, and the weather forecast with the Agriculture services.
- Learn more and do better with the Education services, and get career information and tips, too.
- Have some fun with the Entertainment services which include ringtones, news, astrology, and more.
- Use Healthcare services to stay up-to-date with the latest news that impact your health and well-being
So while time will tell about the real utility of these apps, a few questions do remain on how in a country like India where the entire commodity market is unorganized with no specific price points defined and thousands of middle men involved in commodity price fixing, will services like market prices be really helpful ?
But that’s a later story. For me this effort of using mobile applications to empower farmers is interesting. I even found a lovely flash video on the Ovi site which tells the story rather eloquently. I could not find the embed code for it and hence decided to record it on my own camera. You can see it here for yourself. Sorry for the blurred vision but it was directly from the screen. (Disclaimer- this is in no way my original work . This video can be found on the Nokia Ovi site)
For others who want to know more, you can find an entire presentation on the entire services suite of Ovi Life Tools, here.
Here’s to the application way to smarter farming!
