Warc, 23 May 2014
NEW DELHI: India is emerging as the new battleground for the
world's leading messaging apps, with different strategies being adopted in the
search for growth in a fast-expanding market.
Facebook-owned WhatsApp is currently the market leader, with
a customer base of some 50m, according to figures quoted in Livemint, followed
by WeChat, owned by Tencent, on 27m, Line on 18m and Viber on 17m.
"India is a strategic market for us. We will do
whatever it takes to win this market," Damandeep Singh Soni, the business
development head for Line in India, told the Wall Street Journal.
Accordingly, it is looking to strengthen its presence
through tie-ups with local groups, such as online retailers Jabong and Groupon,
as well as major handset makers Nokia and Samsung. Soni's aim is to get to 50m
registered users "very soon".
Viber has largely eschewed advertising, preferring to focus
on localising content and on innovation to help it reach a target of 30m
subscribers by the end of the year. Anubhav Nayyar, country head (India) at
Viber, is planning more stickers relevant to the Indian market, such as
emoticons of movie stars or a leading cricketer dancing to "Gangnam
Style."
WeChat has also looked to Bollywood, signing up actors Parineeti
Chopra and Varun Dhawan as brand ambassadors as part of a localisation strategy
which also includes stickers, according to a company spokesman.
Observers were sceptical, however, that this flurry of
activity would actually be very effective. "Advertising and other
endorsements can only help new apps to an extent in a market that's solely
dominated by WhatsApp," Manasi Yadav, senior market analyst at research
firm International Data Corp, told Livemeint.
"It [WhatsApp] has managed to keep the customers happy
with its service and by upholding its promise of being a free app."
For rivals to really break through, they would probably need
to develop new functions and features to distinguish them from the market
leader and give users an incentive to switch. "
They will have to come up with some mind-blowing feature,
and not just cosmetic features like tying up with brands and localizing,"
according to Adhvith Dhuddu, founder and chief executive officer of AliveNow, a
social media management company.
Data sourced from Livemint, wall Street Journal; additional
content by Warc staff
No comments:
Post a Comment