MediaTek, a provider of mobile chipset
platform, is planning to make more investments in the Indian mobile market.
The telecom market is growing enough to
make more investment in the telecom space. Indian has more than 600 million
active mobile users. MediaTek has already invested in companies such as S
Mobility (Spice Digital).
“We are seeing more action in the
Indian telecom market. We will be considering more investments depending on
market opportunities. India is a major market for us to grow our
business,” Cheng-Te Chuang, corporate vice president of MediaTek told
TelecomLead.com.
At a press meet organized in Delhi,
MediaTek and Facebook announced their global partnership to bring Facebook to
smart-feature phones.
The chip maker is currently working with S
Mobility and Micromax in India, Cherry Mobile in the Philippines, and Nexian in
Indonesia to roll out their mobile solutions in these key markets.
The partnership will see Facebook embedded
into MediaTek’s mobile platform solutions that will enable users in emerging
markets to access Facebook via affordable mobile devices powered by MediaTek’s
Runtime Environment (MRE).
MRE offers affordable services for emerging
markets as MRE is a middleware technology designed for mobile developers and
application providers to deploy services and content for smart-feature phones.
It will provide a content downloadable mechanism which enables applications
expansion previously reserved for smartphones.
“Our new partnership with Facebook further
reinforces MediaTek’s focus on providing differentiated services and value for
handset brands, giving them the means to offer affordable, compelling and
differentiated mobile solutions to consumers in key emerging markets such as
India,” said Cheng-Te Chuang, corporate vice president of MediaTek.
MRE is expected to be a boon for Indian
mobile users as it will provide affordable phones enabling many users to access
leading social media networks such as Facebook.
India has third largest Facebook users and
has potential to beat Indonesia and US regarding the same. MediaTek is
expecting more than half of its customers in India to adopt its MRE solution.
“This is a true breakthrough for the
industry, and we are very proud to be working with a leader in innovation like
MediaTek to create unprecedented value for our users across India, many of whom
will access popular internet services such as Facebook for the first time via
their mobile device,” said Vikas Jain, business director of Micromax Mobile.
“Every phone should be social and
we’re excited to be working with MediaTek to bring Facebook to more devices, in
more markets around the world and helping users to connect and share anywhere,
anytime,” said Vaughan Smith, Mobile Partnerships and Corporate
Development Vice President of Facebook.
“With MediaTek’s new MRE solution, we are
in a position to redefine the mobile landscape and give our users their first
mobile browsing and social networking experience on a handset that costs less
than US$50,” said Dilip Modi, managing director of S Mobility.
According to a recent study by media
research firm Informa Telecoms and Media, emerging markets will account for 60
percent of the mobile market by 2013. With 70 percent of mobile handsets sold
in emerging markets being feature phones, this global partnership underscores
the significant potential to present users worldwide with a gateway to access
Facebook.
By Rashi Varshney
