Downloading your favourite mobile game will now be less strenuous on the wallet as content providers are looking at reducing prices on downloads of gaming applications.

This is slated to improve telephony service penetration in the country due to increased affordability and could be a precursor for similar moves for other value added services.

For instance, Mumbai-based content developer Nazara Technologies is planning to slash the prices of its gaming application downloads by around 75 per cent. The company, which sells its premium games for Rs 99 and standard games for Rs 50 per download, intends to reduce charges to around Rs 20-25 per download.

A reduction in value-added service prices is necessary to bring in affordability and increase mobile telephony penetration in the country.

Nazara Technologies CEO Nitish Mittersain said the company was looking at reducing prices of gaming applications and was in talks with all its service providers. 

Nazara offers a host of games with cricketing themes that revolve around icons such as Sachin, Dhoni, Sehwag and a host of Bollywood movie themes.

The games are offered through both CDMA and GSM operators, including Reliance Communications [Get Quote], Bharti Airtel [Get Quote], Hutchison-Essar, BPL and Idea Cellular [Get Quote] among others. 

A recent Cellular Operators Association of India study states that telephony penetration in the country stands at a meager 15 per cent of the total 1.10 billion population.

Service providers derive around 10 per cent of their revenues from VAS and content download, under which gaming falls, contributes around 5 per cent of the total VAS.

The emergence of data and multimedia-enabled handsets would result in an increase in usage of VAS, and rise in volume would mitigate loses incurred due to price reduction, Mittersain added.

Mauj Telecom is not reducing prices of gaming applications. But it has recently introduced a renting model for gaming applications. The wireless content provider has introduced two pricing points, Rs 49 for 5 games and Rs 100 for 10 games, even though it also continued with its individual pricing model.

Under the renting concept, a subscriber can download a particular number of games and can play them for a certain number of times after which it expires.

The user can rent the game and if satisfied can make an outright purchase of the same. Normal downloads prices range from Rs 50 to Rs 250 depending on the quality of the game.

"The concept has been introduced to increase usage of gaming as gaming penetration was very low," Mauj CEO Manoj Gawane said, adding, "This should not be termed as price reduction but bundling of services."

There would a price rationalisation on gaming as operators and content providers looked at increasing the contents usage in the country.

Moreover, data services were growing and its ratio to voice stood at around 82:18 from the earlier 78:22, according to an analyst.

The reduction could become a trendsetter as the prices of other value-added services such as SMS, MMS, ringtones and wallpapers were likely to follow suit. However, this might not happen immediately, he said.

Even though, a reduction per se was not expected to happen immediately for SMS, operators would look at bundling it with other services. SMS was emerging as an important aspect for the telephony divide between the rural and urban sectors, Texas Instruments India Director (business development) Jithu Niruthambath said.

In 2006, SMS comprised 57 per cent, ringtones and caller ring back tones 7 per cent, GPRS applications 6 per cent, caller line identification 6 per cent and other applications 19 per cent of the total VAS revenues.

However, Pressmart (a VAS solutions firm) CEO A R Vishwanath differs.