Content apps may contribute 8-10 per cent to telco’s revenues by 2020: Aircel VAS Head

NEW DELHI: Content apps are expected to gain a huge traction owing to surging data traffic and affordable prices, and could contribute 8-10 per cent to a telco’s revenue by 2020, a top Aircel executive said. Explaining revenue generation from content at an ET Telecom webinar, Reena Rathi, head VAS and content at Aircel, said telcos have direct and indirect monetization opportunities where they can earn direct revenue by content play, monetize content on account of customer behaviour, venture into platform play and establish the customer centrr by introducing services such as M-payments and mobile security.

Also, there are channels telcos can explore such as building exclusive content, licensing current content to an aggregator, partnerships with content aggregators or access channels.

Data consumption is expected to rise from 4 GB a month to 11 GB by 2022, according to Ericsson Mobility Report of June 2017. India has witnessed 40 per cent fall in data tariffs in the past fiscal and smartphone ASP has come down to Rs 1,500, according to Mary Meeker’s internet report.

However, it is a challenge to transition from free apps to paid apps. "Willingness of customers to pay for the content apps is low at the moment but it will increase gradually," said Rathi.

Quoting data from GSMA intelligence, Rathi said growth in value added for the mobile ecosystem is being driven by the content and services layer, which will increase from 10 per cent to 14 per cent over 2016 to 2020 as more time is spent on apps consuming video content.

Live streaming is expected to play a key role in content space and will dominate the segment in 2017 with people demanding more live experiences of their favourite content, says Aircel data.