As per data released by Cellular Operators’ Association of India (COAI), India’s GSM subscriber increased to 315.7 million in June end. The GSM based operators added about 9 million users in June, up from 8.3 million in May. However, this data does not include user figures for Reliance Telecom.

Bharti Airtel became the first operator to cross the 100-million subscriber mark, ending the month with 102.3 million users. They acquired 2.8 million subscriber base in June.

Source: COAI

Mobile value-added services (m-VAS) are services, which offer differentiation and the ability for mobile operators and/or service providers to charge a premium price for the services offered. In simple terms it is anything but the regular phone voice conversation we make over the mobile network.

Mobile VAS includes services such as:

1. SMS (short messaging services) – Text messages of 160 characters : P2P (peer-to peer) and A2P (Application to peer)
2. MMS (Multimedia messaging services) – Send photos, images, screen savers, videos, wallpapers etc.
3. USSD (Unstructured supplementary Service Data) – Interactive menu based services
4. CRBT (Caller Ring Back Tone) – Plays pleasant music for the callers
   Video streaming – Watch on demand movies, TV serials, live sports matches
5. Mobile advertisements – Post banners, promotions, sales discounts
   Polls and contests– Voting for your favorite contestants by sending SMS to the given short code
6. Location based services – Friend finder, restaurants, malls etc
7. Bulk SMS – Send greetings, compose one sms to multiple end-users simultaneously based on festivals, occasions, promote retail sales etc.
8. m-commerce – Banking and secure financial transactions
   Social networking – Instant messaging (Mobile 2.0), sharing video, pictures, presence services, blogging
9. IN services (Intelligent Network) – Call divert, call forward, televoting etc.
10. Infotainment services – Sports news, current affairs, weather reports etc
11. Surfing the Internet – browsing and content download through WAP portals

List is just endless...you imagine and it is VAS..

Some new stuffs on the blocks are m- Couponing, m-ticketing, Invertising and much more..

Internet usage based on demographics

In India, SMS (A2P and P2A) and VAS content download is very popular amongst the mobile users. Let us take a look at some real numbers, which is collected, analyzed by surveying ~10K consumers (mobile users). In our previous article we talked about “Significance of Market research based on demographics and geographics“, it can be noticed (refer chart), men use their mobile phones more than women for browsing the Internet (54:46 – Male: Female). Amongst the various services available on the Internet, men and women both use Internet mainly for searching information through search engine or for email purpose.

SMS statistics based on demographics

Another popular service in Mobile VAS is SMS. Take a look at the SMS report, SMS related to downloading of ringtones, wallpapers are the most popular category cite to have received.

9 out of 10 females recall receiving SMS related to downloading wallpapers compared to around 8 out of 10 males. Categories that males recall include things related to contests or financials products (loans, investments etc). The above report includes subscribers of all cellular operators in India and mobile users are spread across various parts of India.

Reference Source : http://vitalanalytics.wordpress.com