In india it is expected that more than 500 Million mobile phones will be in use by the year 2012. It is also estimated that only about 75 Million (depending on which report you read) broadband internet users are expected by the same time. And a majority of these internet users are not very sophisticated users, using the Internet primarily for browsing the web and for email.

Most of the 500 Million phones will be low end phones, with a gradual increase in the percentage of smartphones. This coupled with the gradual expansion of higher bandwidth at lower cost will increase Internet (browser) usage over the next several years. However, for a vast majority of these phone users, in the next few years, SMS is an excellent gateway into the Cloud.

SMS today is primarily used for sharing jokes and astrology, voting on TV contests and of course for endless chatting by youngsters using high-volume SMS packages offered by telcos. The potential of SMS as a means of accessing the Internet is not well exploited. At the time of designing the Simputer, our operative axiom was that the majority of people in most situations can benefit if they are able to send across  just a few bytes of data. This axiom is still operative except that devices (low-end mobile phones)  that can send across these bytes at very low cost through SMS are ubiquitous! There is no need for sophisticated phones with data connections running Internet browsers. SMS is adequate.

The challenge is to create services that are able to exploit the simple structure of texting to achieve complex ends using the power of  the Internet.

AllTrack is the tip of that iceberg.

Filed under: AllTrack by manohar