Higher spending by telecom companies to promote their 4G services is expected to boost the advertising industry by 10-15 percent in 2016, according to Deloitte India.
“The ongoing launch of high-speed 4G data services is set to become the next battleground for telecom firms. The industry is expecting operators like Airtel, Vodafone and the soon-to-be-launched Reliance Jio to spend millions of dollars on advertising over the next few months to grab market share,” Deloitte India’s Ashesh Jani told PTI.
He said the 4G services will also help in pushing the ad spends on mobile.
“Advertisers will be spending more money on video ads on hand-held devices in 2016. Advertisers will think mobile-first when making their digital advertising strategy. With more telecom operators ready to launch 4G services, video consumption on mobile will rise even more, thus pushing ad spends on video ads,” he said.
As per an Internet and Mobile Association of India study, as much as 60 percent of subscribers in the country access the net through mobile phones. It is expected to reach 315 million by 2017.
A recent report from Internet traffic tracking firm ComScore revealed that online video consumption here grew 100 percent in the past two years alone.
“Digital media continued to show the maximum year-on-year growth, above 30 percent in 2015. Video, mobile and social media are biggest growth drivers for it,” Jani said.
The ICC T20 World Cup, which will be held in the country from March, is also expected to be a trigger in 2016, he said. In 2015, he observed that e-commerce players had increased their spending by 70 per cent and now accounted for 6 percent of total TV advertising.
Online retailers have used radio extensively in their ad campaigns and have aggressively advertised on the medium to gain market, Jani notes. The Cricket World Cup, IPL, and Bihar and Delhi assembly polls also contributed to overall growth in 2015 and this year too with four large states — West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Assam — going to polls, this will give a big leg-up to the advertising industry.
“Government ad spends rose drastically in 2015 with campaigns like the Make in India, Swachh Bharat and Digital India,” Jani said, adding last year ad industry maintained its annual growth similar to that of 2014.
According to the Pitch-Madison Media Advertising Outlook 2015, the advertising industry grew by 16.4 percent in 2014. It revised its forecast for 2015 to 13.8 percent from 9.6 percent.

Yahoo Mail’s smart “contact cards” now include support for Twitter and LinkedIn information and will allow users to see a contact’s most recent tweets in addition to company, title, phone number and more, when they hover over a person’s name in a message.
Yahoo Mail had first rolled out contact cards as an enhancement in March in response to Google’s revamp of its own Google Contacts service. The cards were designed to pull out extra information about the person you’re emailing with from outside sources as well as from your own inbox, reported TechCrunch.
With the new social media integrations, Yahoo said that it will now be able to pull in names for email addresses, profile photos and links to their social media profiles.

Amid the raging debate globally over net neutrality, which has evoked a strong reaction from stakeholders in India, domain experts feel that an unshackled access to the Internet world isn’t feasible in India yet but attempts must continue for egalitarianism.
“Building a net neutral network is technologically not possible to implement. It’s a utopian idea – no basis in technology,” said Ravi V.S. Prasad, a telecom consultant who has designed several data-com and telecom networks in the past 30 years.
“No telecom engineer will say that network neutrality is feasible. The concept that each data is treated equally does not hold good. You can’t design data. The Internet inherently prioritises data on a scale of 0-7 points basis,” Prasad told IANS.
Explaining further, he said a network architecture gives highest priority to network management, followed by online gaming, speech, videos and then still images, music files, movie downloads and file transfers. These cannot be on the same footing.
Network neutrality, or open inter-working, means in accessing the World Wide Web, one is in full control over how to go online, where to go and what to do, as long as these are lawful. So firms that provide Internet services should treat all lawful Internet content in a neutral manner.
It also required such companies not to charge users, content, platform, site, application or mode of communication differentially. These are also the founding principles of the Internet and what has made it the largest and most diverse platform for expression in recent history.
Giving a slightly different perspective was Subimal Bhattacharjee, member of Research Advisory Network under the Global Commission on Internet Governance – an initiative of the Davos-based World Economic Forum launched last year to articulate the future of internet governance.
“It is practically impossible to build a net-neutral network, but it has to be attained – or at least attempted. This is what will support innovation. Otherwise, the Net will not remain open and free,” Bhattacharjee told IANS.
“Also, every telecom service provider is an intermediary under the Information Technology Act, in any case. If an operator tries to give an advantage to some players by taking a fee and improving their services, it is not allowed under Section 79 of IT Act.”
According to Antony Alex, chief executive officer of online learning platform myLaw.net, the IT Act already provides for exceptions where net neutrality could be violated by internet service providers – pornography being one such example.
“But violation of net neutrality for commercial benefit of a few is a different issue altogether. The law as it stands now is silent on net neutrality. That’s why Internet service providers take advantage and offer different plans, which go against net neutrality,” he said.
Bhattacharjee said: “The question that lies ahead of us now is whether service providers will be able to provide any special service under the over-the-top (OTT) banner. The way the mood is, it seems unlikely.” Such services include apps like Viber and WhatsApp.
Similarly, Abhilekh Verma, partner with the legal and corporate consultancy firm Khaitan and Co., said the argument favouring neutrality of the internet is an important one. “But one also has to note that in India, the internet penetration leaves a lot to be desired.”
In India, there were some 95 million broadband connections as of end-February. There was also a growing appetite among netizens in India to log on to social networking sites – Facebook, for example, claims 118 million active users in the country.
Another votary of net neutrality is technology evangelist Sam Pitroda, who, at the instance of then prime minister Rajiv Gandhi, was responsible for India’s telecom revolution in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
“Net neutrality in India is fundamental to the future of democracy, development, demography and disparity. It is not about business, economics, customer service or the opinion of a few educated elites,” Pitroda said.
He gave the example of the US and said after a brief debate there, the administration felt its importance. “However it required interventions at the highest level to push net neutrality. Short term issues cannot be allowed to create a fog and confusion in the minds of people.”
The Netherlands, Mexico, Brazil, Chile and Ecuador have also adopted net neutrality.
As the situation stands in India today, the telecom watchdog released a paper inviting comments from all stakeholders on what are called the over-the-top services. Responses have to be filed by April 24 and the counter-arguments by May 8. The suggestions will subsequently follow.
Communications and IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad, a lawyer by profession, said the government intends to take a call on the matter after receiving the watchdog’s recommendations, as it intended to involve wider consultations.
“A panel is also examining the issue. It will submit its report by the second week of May. These will help the government take a comprehensive decision on this issue.”

In a new development, Nokia is now looking to sell its HERE maps business unit. Reuters reports that the company has hired a financial adviser, as it does not see much synergy in its map business after the sale its handset unit.
Nokia is looking to focus on its wireless network business, which amounts to 90 percent of revenue for the company and improving its debt rating. The current valuation of the map business is at about €2 billion. Bloomberg reports that HERE made full-year sales of €970 million and an operating loss of €1.24 billion, including a goodwill impairment of €1.21 billion. Nokia had bought Navteq for €5.7 billion in 2007.
“We have estimated that HERE’s value is around €3.3-4.8 billion, and in a possible deal the price should be more than that,” Inderes Equity Research said on its Twitter account.
Nokia is reported to have approached cab service company Uber and other private equity firms. A group of German carmakers have also shown interest. Bids for the HERE maps unit are expected to come in by the end of April.
If the sale goes through, Nokia will look to grow its network business, and even consider buying rival company Alcatel-Lucent SA. The HERE maps business currently provides services to Amazon, Microsoft, Yahoo and several car-navigation systems.
After the sale of its handset unit, Nokia has three businesses left – the map business, the network business and an R&D unit which licenses all its patents.

World’s largest contract electronics manufacturer Foxconn is looking at re-entering India after shutting down the Nokia plant in Chennai. The company is planning to set up manufacturing units in Gujarat, Noida, and also a small trial unit in Andhra Pradesh.
Economic Times reports that this time, Foxconn plans to manufacture Apple smartphones in India. Foxconn holds the largest contract for Apple phones manufacturing. “With booming smartphone sales, Foxconn is ready with its plans. On cards are two plants, one in Gujarat and the second in Noida,” anonymous sources told the publication.
After the Nokia-Microsoft deal, Foxconn’s Indian business went for a toss and all the three plants on the Chennai-Bengaluru highway that manufactured Nokia handsets were shut down. The company faced a lot of flak from employees, who protested outside the factory for leaving them in the lurch. Around 1,700 employees were impacted by Foxconn factories shut down in December.
Now that Foxconn plans to re-enter India, it has hired Josh Foulger, a senior Nokia executive who was also involved in setting up Nokia plant in Chennai.
The announcement of these plants are expected to come after the Indian government’s announcement of its ‘Make In India’ policy. ”While policy announcements of Make in India are not imperative for Foxconn’s investments for smart phone making plant, a favorable manufacturing policy will help greater commitment for future investments,” sources told the publication.
The small trial production factory unit will be near Sri City in Andhra Pradesh and will conduct R&D activities beside new product development.

Flipkart hired Google India’s former research head Peeyush Ranjan as engineering head to drive its technology initiatives. “Ranjan is joining us as senior vice-president and head of engineering to spearhead our innovations,” the e-commerce firm said in a statement. After nine years at Google’s headquarters in the US, where he led its Android One engineering group, Ranjan returned to India to be managing director of its research and development centre in this tech hub.
“Ranjan will work with our commerce platform head Mukesh Bansal and his team to build on our technology expertise,” Flipkart said.
Ranjan’s appointment comes close on the heels of Flipkart hiring Punit Soni, a former product executive in Google and global telecom major Motorola, as its chief product officer. “Ranjan and Soni will soon relocating to our headquarters here from Google’s Mountain-view campus,” the statement said.
“Ranjan’s experience managing Google’s engineering group in India and his expertise in mobile is a value addition to our technology team,” Flipkart co-founder Bansal said.
Ranjan graduated in computer science from IIT Kharagpur in West Bengal and Purdue University and has an MBA from University of Washington in the US. Flipkart offers over 20 million products across 70 categories, including books, media, consumer electronics and lifestyle through cash-on-delivery service with a 30-day replacement policy.
The eight-year-old firm claims to have 30 million registered users with 10 million daily visits or hits on its online portal and delivers eight million shipments a month.