It’s time to get out the tin foil hats and fire up that printing press. We have some interesting news for you conspiracy theorists out there. OK, so we highly doubt that there is an actual conspiracy, but it is fun to connect the dots. Sometimes the picture ends up looking like the Indian Subcontinent. There is a lot going on over there apparently. In addition to running the call center for my Direct TV account, India also happens to be the second most populace country in the World. That’s a lot of potential cell phone users. Something that every major cell phone manufacturer is aware of and is trying to tap into, or is bending over backwards to hold onto.
Let’s start with Research in Motion (RIM). The Canadian company, which makes the Blackberry, has been desperately trying to come up with a way to allow the Indian government to hack into their encrypted e-mail service. Failure to do so would mean a ban in India, something that RIM is desperate to avoid. India is claiming that terrorist networks can currently use the encrypted e-mail system to freely communicate without government monitoring. RIM, whether they agree or not, need to solve the problem or risk losing out on a billion potential customers.
Speaking of losing out on a billion customers, Nokia reportedly has lost nearly 20% of their market share in India, holding a paltry 36%. While that number is still pretty significant, consider the fact that Nokia once held a 70% share of the market in India and things start to look kind of bleak.
This brings us to our fake kingpin of this whacky conspiracy theory – Apple. Word on the Bangalore streets is that Apple is creating a CDMA iPhone specifically for India. The iPhone covers nearly all of North and South America, Western Europe, Australia and select African and Asian nations. It goes without saying that the addition of CDMA devices in India would be massive. That’s bad news for Nokia, whose smartphone division hasn’t exactly been churning out winners in recent years. Even Blackberry has to worry. They might come up with a solution to the Indian government’s requests just in time to see Apple swoop in and steal a huge portion of their market share. Only time will tell, but things are definitely getting interesting southwest of the Himalayas.
Recent Comments