India's VAS industry to touch Rs 200b by 2015

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NEW DELHI, July 12 (PTI): Riding high on the success of music, ringtones and other innovative multimedia applications, the value added services (VAS) industry is expected to touch revenue of Rs 200 billion by 2015, says a report.

The industry, which has been valued at Rs 50 billion at present, will see a major growth in the music and mobile gaming segments and could reach Rs 200 billion, a report by

PricewaterhouseCoopers said.

According to the report, the industry is primarily driven by SMS feature, that has about 44 per cent share. However, new applications like ringtones and RBTs, GPRS, CLI, would accelerate the growth.

The roll out of 3G services would also support the growth of the industry as 3G customers are more willing to use a variety of multi-media services than 2G customers, the report said.

At present, music and games are downloaded on GPRS or 2.5G platform.

One of the factors that anticipate a huge market for VAS in India is the decreasing age profile of mobile handset owners and falling costs of cell phones with ever richer features, the report added.