Prakash Sayini, at Forum Nokia started the session promising that the Forum Nokia will continue to sponsor similar events to leverage the ecosystem and appreciated the organizers for holding such workshops.

According to Sayini , the one good thing that happened in India is the mobile penetration. When there is a big subscription base in India, which is the size of the entire population of Singapore, what we need to reflect is, are we really utilizing the services effectively?

He says, "We are adding two Singapore populations every month which is to be seen in relation to the 9.22 million  growth in July." Though the subscription base is available, if you look at the trend in the subscription system, the players are looking at aggressive price plans. One challenge for the service providers is to retain their customers. The data will grow, but are we really targeting the right segment? We need to look at the right niche market segments.

There is lot of innovations in the data space. Now the mobiles have lot of converged devices- map, multimedia etc. Back then, there were lots of constraints. But now, Convergence is on the way. There are other medias converging to the mobile phones. So it is creating a lot of opportunities to innovate. Identifying the trend, one niche segment, which Nokia is targeting, is to bring in more entertainment in mobiles through movies.

Internet is transforming the mobility and mobility is transforming the internet. Initially when, we were browsing lot of website, we are not getting the look and feel of the website. However, now some websites are customized for the experience. So we have come up with widgets. It sits on the internet it gets downloaded the particular information and will provide the user experience. This will help the companies to generate more stickiness among the users to come back again. So the companies  have to look into 'stickiness' factor to retain their customers in their own network . In India there is lot of potential in widgets. Even though the 3G is coming to India, it is not that everyone will have it. Almost 60 percent of the people of the existing high end phone users may upgrade to 3G in the coming years , but still may not know how to use it from the services perpectives. And we need to look at implementing these widgets in low end phone.

Future technologies - With converging Business Models

The shift is already happening with the convergence of internet and mobile. Many companies like Sony, Airtel, Star Plus, You Tube, Flickr, Google, Yahoo and many have already adopted this model. But if they are offering widgets, it will help the customers to experience more  quality advertisements and branding for the companies. With the advent of emerging technologies like Wifi and others, we will be moving from basic ring tones to collaboration and communities, which is a hot cake in India.  Of course, you can build the products and host it in these communities.

How it will work and who are the drivers?

We have heard about the stories where the operator has to open to the third party developers and develop products that fit to the customers. So we have to leverage on third party developers. Focusing on end users is very important for the success of the story. Whatever we create we need to keep the end user in mind. So there is a lot of innovation needed. How to reach to the unreached are some of the key issues? How do we educate them, how to deliver infotainment?  There are different companies focusing on different segments. So why not integrate all of them in a single platform. For instance, I need to get the cricket score and I am going to a particular website and for logistics somewhere else. If there is a linkage factors been created in the service then that stickiness can be created by the service provider or the players it will help the users to retain them in their network.

In India, the end users have high expectations for services. So to meet their expectation, we need to crystallize idea for mobile - marry it with the handset and the killer application. So focusing on the end user needs is essential to turn the ecosystem into a success.

For instance, a software engineer at Maharashtra has developed a solution that can use mobile as a source of power to pump water using motor set. His innovation was identified by the farmers as it benefits for them in farming when there is electricity shortage.

This innovation is only one example and much more innovations can be brought into our ecosystem.