The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India floated a consultation paper on playing an active role in monitoring the Indian television viewership. TAM Media Research is the sole player in the monitoring market for the last 10 years. TAM's CEO L V Krishnan says govt should start regulating all types of rating outputs like daily newspaper polls done via SMS or even TV polls during elections and not just TV TRPs. TAM is often criticised for its poor sample size, TRP system, etc.
The bad news for newspaper publishers -- and there are over 40,000 newspapers in India -- has just grown worse. The price of newsprint, imported or indigenous, is set to touch $1,000 per tonne, and this after a 23 per cent increase over the previous four months that took prices to $760 a tonne in March. Factor in the April jump and newsprint prices, which typically account for 50 to 60 per cent of production costs, have risen over 60 per cent over the last six months.
Led by Huawei Technologies and ZTE, Chinese manufacturers are challenging the domination of European equipment-makers by grabbing contracts (some of which are in advanced stages of negotiations) worth over $2 billion in 2008 -- nearly one thirds of the Indian market of around $6 billion.
The govt is likely to propose to the EU that it will validate security procedures in its airports before allowing passengers to carry duty-free goods to India. This is in retaliation to a similar proposal made by EU last year, which led to protests from companies operating duty-free shops in India. EU officials would have to validate the security systems at Indian airports before allowing transit passengers to buy at duty-free shops here, resulting in dispute between the two.
Struggling US telecom giant Motorola is exploring the possibility of shifting part of the manufacturing facility it is closing in Singapore to India. China and Thailand are also on the radar. Top sources said India is high on the list since Motorola already has a plant in Chennai and a large domestic mobile phone base of over 120 million phones annually.
The Italian luxury brand is open to working on traditional Indian clothing and creating a limited domestic collection using local tradition and design. At the moment, Gucci has two stores in Mumbai and Delhi and is planning to open two more, one of which will be in Bangalore. Gucci offers a range of products including bags, footwear, ready-to-wear, perfumes and watches. Apart from Gucci, its other brands include YSL, Sergio Rossi, Stella McCartney, Bottega Veneta, watch brand
International digital marketing company Digitas has partnered with Solutions to enter the digital marketing sector in India. Digitas is owned by global advertising major Publicis Groupe. The new entity will be called Solutions Digitas. Digital marketing was not just online marketing and India is an upcoming market for digital marketing. Digitas will also introduce Prodigious digital production that manages the technology end of digital marketing for clients such as GM & P&G.
GMR Hyderabad International Airport Ltd, the consortium operating the new Hyderabad airport, has offered to halve ground-handling charges even as the civil aviation ministry allowed the domestic carriers to undertake their ground-handling till January 1, 2009. This will give the two sides enough time to resolve the contentious issue, which almost jeopardised the opening of the new airport and forced a postponement once.
The Anil Ambani group company is in advanced talks with France Telecom for a branding, marketing and franchisee agreement. The company plans to launch the brand by the second quarter of FY09, according to sources close to the development. Initially, the Orange may be launched on RCom's CDMA network -- spanning across 23,000 towns and 5 lakh villages in India -- and later extended to its 8 GSM circles. The Indian company has a total of 44.5 million subscribers in India.
The fee that TV channels pay to independent cable operators and the multi-system operators is set to go up by 40-50 per cent. The market for carriage fee charged by cable operators to distribute satellite television channels is on fire.A plethora of new TV channels have been launched and are jostling for space on the already choked analogue cable pipe. Nearly 330 channels are chasing bandwidth that can accommodate barely 80 channels.
Cola wars are pass, it's things like mobile phone services that are the real competition for Coke products, said Neville Isdell, chairman and chief operating officer of Coca-Cola, the world's largest beverage company. In India, strategy is no longer about competing with global rival PepsiCo or other local soft drink brands. Instead, it's about influencing consumer choice away from such purchases as rock-bottom pre-paid mobile cards to buying a Coke product.
Indian operators offering BlackBerry services, top executives of Canadian telco Research in Motion (RIM), the company that owns the brand, security agencies and officials of the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) are expected to meet on March 14 to answer the concerns of security agencies in a bid to prevent having BlackBerry services terminated after the March-end deadline.
Canadian communications major Research In Motion (RIM), owners of the BlackBerry brand of mobile phones, has assured the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) that it would sort out the BlackBerry tangle by initiating discussions between security agencies of Canada and India. The move comes in response to a government notice directing BlackBerry service providers to stop services by December 31, 2007.
Star Plus has signed up telecom major Airtel as the presenting sponsor for the Shah Rukh Khan-anchored Kya Aap Panchvi Pass Se Tez Hai. According to sources, the deal has been struck at Rs 40 crore. The Airtel deal follows on the heels of its competitor Vodafone signing up as the presenting sponsor for the Indian Premier League on Sony TV.
Private airports at Bangalore and Hyderabad have proposed heavy user development fees. The UDF is much higher compared to leading airports in the world.
State-owned Mahangar Telephone Nigam's (MTNL) ambitious drive to become a major player in the internet protocol TV (IPTV) services sector is facing a roadblock. IPTV is a technology that uses telephone lines to provide TV programming to viewers.
With the Bangalore airport announcing stiff user developmental fee on domestic passengers, low-cost carriers -- JetLite, SpiceJet and Simplifly Deccan (formerly Air Deccan) -- have decided to drastically cut their flight schedules to the city and other new airports like Hyderabad.
With the Bangalore airport announcing stiff user developmental fee on domestic passengers, low-cost carriers JetLite, SpiceJet and Simplifly Deccan (formerly Air Deccan) have decided to drastically cut their flight schedules to the city and other new airports like Hyderabad.
A country liquor manufacturer is set to launch the Radisson brand in Ranchi.
Bangalore's new airport will be ready on March 7 to receive the first commercial test flights. It plans to start commercial operations on March 28 or 30, soon after Hyderabad's new airport does so on 16 March.
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