Company is in talks with several telecom operators for offering email and social networking applications.
Enlarging its mobile application offering to now basic phone users in Gujarat, Ahmedabad-based Net4Nuts Limited has tied up with a French firm for offering email and social networking accessibility through the SMS and Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD) gateway.
For this, the company is also in talks with several telecom operators for offering email and social networking applications on the latter's network in the state.
Refusing to divulge the French firm's name, Chirag Patel, found and chief executive officer, Net4Nuts said, "Our French partner is a specialty company in the USSD technology. On our part will be developing applications of email and social networking usage based on our French partner's SMS and USSD gateway."
A middleware technology company providing various mobile Value Added Services (VAS) to top mobile operators in India and S.E. Asia, Net4Nuts recently developed a mobile application that showcases TV schedule on mobile phones.
Talking further about the tie-up, Patel said, "The tie-up will focus on catering to basic phone users. There are already ample applications, especially in web browsing, emailing and social networking, available for mobile phone users using data-enable or smartphones. We, however, found that there is a huge potential to tap in the basic phone segment."
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According to Patel, industry estimates suggest that there 900 million mobile accounts, with 600 million unique mobile subscribers (many people have more than one account).
What's more, there are 50 million mobile data subscribers, whereas five million access Internet only on the phone.
Moreover, in India there are 37 million Facebook users, many of whom require social networking access on their basic phones as well.
Earlier, Net4Nuts had offered email application for smartphones called 'MeOnGo', short for ‘Me on the Go’. The application allowed a user to read emails on a mobile.
Access is also available from any POP3 or IMAP4 based mailboxes. The service works over Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) and supports versions 1.1 and above for Wireless Markup Language (WML) and Extensible HyperText Markup Language( XHTML).
While earlier the product was offered for no charge in India, MeOnGo was later launched in overseas market for a nominal price.
Meanwhile, the company has also expanded its VAS offering to newer operating systems.
"The IT growth in Gujarat will be driven by mobile applications primarily because of landscape changes in telecom technology. Not only platforms like Android, Apple and Symbian are pushing up the standards and demand for applications, network connectivity has made sure more consumers using such applications," Patel added.