Messages

886

4G / LTE / Reliance Jio Network Coverage

« on: December 09, 2014, 10:44:21 AM »

Reliance Jio Infocomm needs to significantly ramp-up network and distribution footprint to compete with incumbents. Also, it needs to roll-out a pan-India network with 50% coverage of rural Short Distance Charging Areas (SDCAs) to fulfill the mandated five-year roll-out obligations. High 4G handset prices and high power consumption of multi-band handsets are major impediments given low income levels and erratic power situation in India.

COAI believes that Reliance JIO is unlikely to bid for 900MHz band spectrum in upcoming auction since 1) It is not suitable for 4G, and 2) It did not bid for the same in the earlier auction for metro circles. Given its presence in the 1,800MHz band, Reliance JIO would likely be able to use spare capacity of other operators through spectrum sharing for voice once spectrum sharing is cleared.

887

SmartPhones & Apps / Baidu has 41% of Chinese App Distribution Market

« on: December 08, 2014, 10:46:54 AM »

According to the report, total app downloads reached 28.6b (+12.3% QoQ) in Q314. Baidu's app distribution platform maintained their collective leading position, with a 41.8% market share. Following Baidu, Qihoo captured a 22.7% marketshare. Tencent's platform meanwhile continued their strong momentum, with their share increasing to 21.5% from 20.1% in 2Q14. We note that the total daily app distribution of Tencent's platform surpassed 100m in Oct, double the amount when compared with Jan of this year (50m).

We note that the government recently cracked down many apps deemed to have inappropriate content. The authorities required the app store operators to cooperate in its investigation. We do not expect this issue to cause material impact on the companies app store business as the questionable content only accounts for a very small portion of their app libraries. The app stores moreover have taken a range of actions to prevent such content from being distributed again.

888

3G / HSPA / EVDO / Auction of 2100MHz Spectrum A Positive

« on: December 07, 2014, 07:31:13 PM »

TRAI has invited Comments from stake holders on the pricing of 2100MHz Spectrum in the Feb-2015 Auction.

In our view, augmenting the supply of spectrum in the 2100MHz band would help the telecom operators expand their 3G footprint and would be beneficial to Indian subscribers. We believe it would ensure availability of enough 3G spectrum (900+2100MHz), which might result in a more rationalized bidding process. It could also allow for further consolidation in the industry which, in our view, would benefit the top three operators.

889

Smart Connected Devices / Can Yahoo Japan Survive the Shift to Small Screen ?

« on: December 07, 2014, 06:40:57 PM »

Yahoo Japan supplies an exhaustive range of services comprising advertising, commerce, and content, and it has secured a position similar to mass media in the Internet sector. It boasts dominant media value in the PC space.

However, Yahoo Japan is seeing a decline in part of its advertising revenue due to the increasing popularity of smart devices, putting pressure on the firm to change its business structure. Ad demand is generally firm due to improved earnings at advertisers, but with the shift among consumers to smartphones Yahoo Japan has not seen growth in query and customer numbers, primarily in its PC business. As a result, we believe premium ad revenue will fall sharply and sponsored search revenue will remain flat.

Yahoo Japan has leveraged its advertising technology to continually roll out new ad products and grow revenue. Right now the firm is experimenting with adding timeline functionality to its home page for smart devices. By using big data it aims to develop more effective ad products. However, the home page is Yahoo Japan's principle medium, so it is being very cautious in making this change. We believe it will take several years for the firm to develop new products, launch them, and start to see ad revenue grow again.

Yahoo Japan needs to secure and train human resources. The major source of differentiation when developing new ad products is the usage of Yahoo Japan's big data. However, we believe it vital for the company to analyze these data and combine them with other data (online and offline purchasing behavior) to find meaning in all the information, and then based on this develop new solutions (highly effective new ad products). We think it could be difficult to do this with existing human resources that have mainly dealt with display ads and sponsored search ads.

890

Smart Connected Devices / Why Amazon Plans Premium Ad-Supported VOD ?

« on: December 07, 2014, 06:23:49 PM »

Computing Giant, Amazon is planning to expand its video offering by launching a standalone ad-supported VOD service early next year. Given this divergence from the traditional fee based revenue model (Netflix, HBO GO, Hulu etc.), Amazon would be making two substantial assumptions: 1) ad dollars will continue to shift to digital; and 2) consumers will be accepting of advertisements in longer-form ?TV-style? content online.

How Ad Supported Model Helps Dramas / Comedy, etc ?
Digital pure-play publishers are seeing some encouraging trends for ad-supported models. Over the last year, the ?TV-Style? content categories of Scripted Drama, Comedy/Variety, and Documentary/Reality have grown ad view share by approximately 900bps to 28%. Stats suggests that consumers are not likely to view advertisements as a deterrent to ?TV-Style? content, which is encouraging for the ad-supported VOD model. Advertisers would also likely be supportive of this model considering that ad completion rates tend to be the highest for content that is greater than 20 minutes

891

Technology / Infosys 3.0 & Design Thinking

« on: December 07, 2014, 05:17:36 PM »

Infosys has created Infosys Information Platform (IIP) to deliver big data solutions across industries based on IIP and design thinking. This has been launched on leading Open Source components and partner products to deliver enterprise-class data foundation at dramatic price performance improvement. IIP to evolve into Infosys Platform (IP) on open platform across services and clients. Management believes Big data & analytics is a huge opportunity on open source software.

Design thinking (DT) to be proactively pursued to identify problems / issues faced by clients and offering solutions from end-user perspective thus enabling businesses / clients to embrace new areas. ~8.2K employees have been trained on DT (incl. 160+ senior personnel). 3 clients have completed workshops on DT and 25+ are in pipeline.

892

SmartPhones & Apps / Tencent Partners Warner Bros, HBO and FOX

« on: December 01, 2014, 02:46:35 PM »

During the recent Tencent Video Summit, the group officially announced plans to enter into strategic partnerships with Warner Bros, HBO and FOX, aiming to become the exclusive online broadcasting platform of various U.S. TV series and National Geographic Channel programming in China. Domestically, Tencent Video again obtained the exclusive online broadcasting rights to The Voice of China, which will be in its fourth season. Tencent Video seeks to continue exclusive coverage of a wide range of hit series in 2015 through the above-mentioned range of investments and partnerships, as well as other types of content acquisition.

Tencent also seeks to offer a broader array of live music as part of its 2015 strategy. Tencent Video seeks to deliver 50 online concerts in 2015. Another key investment area will be in-house production in TV dramas according to the platform. The Tencent Video app on iOS platform has climbed to the #8 spot in the free genre in China, from being #13 a few days ago

893

5G / Wi-Fi / Reliance TRUE UNLIMITED 999 Broadband

« on: November 27, 2014, 11:04:42 PM »

Ahead of Reliance Jio Infocomm's 4G LTE Nationwide Launch, Airtel and Reliance Communication have entered into Wireless Data War.

Airtel dropped 4G LTE Prices yesterday and Today Reliance Communications' EVDO Wireless broadband has announced the Drop in prices.

Reliance EVDO True UNLIMITED 999 Plan Details
No limit on GBs and no hidden / extra charges
Next-Generation Pro 3 network offers data speeds of up to 14.7 Mbps
Available on Mobile or USB Dongle too

There is NO fair usage clause, policy or any hidden charges. Like the name of the product says, it is a 'True Unlimited Plan', regardless of the amount of usage.


Currently available in in Chennai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Pune and will be expanded to other cities very son.

894

4G / LTE / Airtel 4G rates Lower than 3G

« on: November 27, 2014, 11:01:57 PM »

Airtel has drastically dropped 4G LTE Prices to match with 3G Pricing and for the High End Rs 999 Plan, the company is offering 10GB High Speed Data which is cheaper than 3G.

For 10GB of High Speed Broadband Download using 3G Network, Airtel consumers currently pay Rs 1,499.

Who will be the next one to jump into the price war ahead of Reliance Jio's soft Launch a Month from now on Dec-28 coinciding with the Founder's Birth Anniversary ?

895

SmartPhones & Apps / Apple AppStore Downloads Rise

« on: November 27, 2014, 09:01:59 PM »

The daily downloads of iOS Top 200 apps in the US rose to 7.8m in Oct (+39% YoY/+42% MoM), mainly driven by the launch of iPhone 6/6+ and the iOS 8 upgrade.

The average customer acquisition cost declined to US$2.16 in Oct from US$2.25 in Sep. Advertising costs for apps however remain high due on persistently intense industry competition. Cost per install rose to US$1.46 (+59% MoM) on iOS. The Android platform, on the other hand, only saw a US$1.15 (+1% MoM) cost per install in Oct. Loyal customers on Android however showed better growth momentum. Average spending on apps rose to US$0.1 (+28% MoM) in 3Q14. Android had a market share of 83.6% vs iOS at 12.3% in 3Q14 globally.

Chinese iphone app store offer
Total iOS distributions in China have also likely been driven by strong demand for the iPhone 6/6+, as well as series of promotions on iOS. Apple recently launched a short term promotion across many of the apps on its platform, charging only RMB1 per download in China, an initiative which surely must have driven download volumes across many apps. Daily downloads of VVebo on the first day of the promotion, for instance, grew to be 150x higher than normal days.

896

3G / HSPA / EVDO / Airtel to Expand 3G Footprint - Akhil Gupta

« on: November 26, 2014, 10:22:31 AM »

Mr. Akhil Gupta, Chairman of Bharti Infratel was positive on data, claiming it will be a second telecom revolution, with towers a proxy for this growth.

Data consumption is growing 100% yoy but significant growth potential remains ? 40k of 140k total BTS (for Bharti) are for 3G & only 20% of its subs are currently using data.

2G coverage is complete but 3G has only just started (focus is on top 4-5 cities in each circle) and LTE has yet to be rolled out. US$30bn has been invested by telcos since 2010 on spectrum; will be primarily used for data. Further, this spectrum on average is on a wider band vs voice.

897

Web 2.0 / China auto e-commerce players' Singles Day Sales

« on: November 25, 2014, 11:38:49 AM »

With the close of China's Double 11 (or Singles Day) promotional campaigns, Autohome, Bitauto and Tmall released results from their respective auto e- commerce events. Autohome announced that it had received 37,000 orders on Nov. 11th (+108% YoY over 17,770 orders achieved during the 2013 event.) Vehicle transaction value totaled ~Rmb6b.

We note that this year, some 2,488 vehicles were fully paid for online, this in addition to the traditional discount coupon sales model - a trial to test China consumers' willingness to pay online for such a high ticket item.

Bitauto completed 63,000 orders with 26,000 on its two main e-commerce platforms: Huimaiche.com and 37,000 from Bita Mall. The number of orders recorded by Tmall amounted to 50,700 (vs 10,700 in 2013, +373% YoY). This year Tmall cooperated with Sina Weibo and Sina Auto to promote the campaign.

898

Technology / Advertisers Move to Digital / Programmatic Bidding

« on: November 21, 2014, 01:16:21 PM »

Programmatic buying has taken the digital advertising world by storm and with many brands and advertisers late to the game, 2015 could be a breakthrough year for programmatic. Accompanying this adoption is the growing desire for transparency in the programmatic buying process, cost-cutting, as well as the desire to leverage firstparty data. The result has been many brands establishing or planning to establish in-house teams to run campaigns via self-serve platforms.

With over 60% of the market either new to the game (18 months or less) or not yet using programmatic advertising (but planning to use it), the growth potential for programmatic in 2015 appears promising. The other key theme that may shape programmatic advertising in 2015 is the growing trend of establishing inhouse buying teams.

Given these two trends, we believe covered companies likely to benefit are FUEL, TUBE, AOL and to a lesser extent, YUME, which is rolling out a programmatic offering in 2015.

899

3G / HSPA / EVDO / Idea BalanceSheet Strong to Win 900MHz Spectrum

« on: November 21, 2014, 12:50:34 PM »

Mr. Akshaya Moondra, CFO and Mr. Arpit Gupta, IR said that Idea Cellular has the balance sheet strength and sufficient headroom (in terms of leverage) to retain at least 4.4MHz of 900Mhz spectrum in the upcoming spectrum auctions. The company highlighted that it is well positioned to benefit from 1) strong data volume growth, given operators other than the 'top 3 operators' lack the ability and/or willingness to invest in network 2) better cost efficiencies driven by scale economies and 3) reduced competitive intensity driving voice RPM and operating leverage.

SmartPhones / mobile offers the only gateway for mass-market customers to access the internet in India (~92% of Indians that have access to internet is via mobile). Management commented that data is EBITDA margin accretive given 1) no interconnect costs and 2) most of data related costs flow below EBITDA. Data is likely to be a key growth driver for the company

900

Web 2.0 / Dot Com Valuation Craze

« on: November 21, 2014, 09:35:15 AM »

Analysts Upgrade InfoEdge India due to Dot com Valuation Craze,

The recent deal in housing.com values the portal at about US$250 mn. 99acres has 3X the traffic share of housing.com, which would imply a valuation closer to US$700 mn. Given the dearth of details of the valuation of housing.com, we have been cautious in assigning a 30% discount to this value. We therefore value 99acres.com at about US$550 mn or `250 per share for Info Edge

Unconfirmed media reports say that Zomato raised US$ 60 mn, implying a value US$600-US650 mn. Info Edge has invested US$30 mn in this round, maintaining its 50% shareholding. Assuming a 20% discount to the cited transaction value, Zomato would contribute `130 per share to Info Edge