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Hot Products 2000

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VoicenData Bureau
New Update

With communication market being flooded with products and with every manufacturer claiming to provide better and improved products with added features than their competitors, it is the buyer who has the ultimate choice. As we move into the new millennium, the buyers will want more value for their money. We at Voice & Data felt the need to provide the most useful product information to the potential customers. This exhaustive Buyers’ Guide is aimed as a reference where products have been enlisted in an easy-to-find format. 

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We are providing our readers an exhaustive list of personal and business communication products–EPABX/KTS, mobile phones, modems, fax, satphones, and feature phones. We have also featured some call centre solution providers incorporating some of their unique features. The vendors were asked to provide information for this product listing. This was followed by an insert in the January issue of

Voice & Data inviting companies to get their products listed. We were a bit surprised by the pattern of

response. While some of them responded with incredible promptness, others took some time to send us the required information. Then there were others who chose to dither. Despite repeated follow-ups, we failed to get response from some vendors. 

Since it was difficult to incorporate all the features and technical specifications of all the products, we have considered only the main features. Majority of the vendors was reluctant to divulge the exact price of their products. (This may turn out to be an excuse to strike bargains for the customers.) For those wanting more information, contact addresses and phone numbers have been provided. 

Before proceeding with the Buyers'' Guide, let us take a brief look at the overall scenario and trends in different segments.

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EPBAX



India is fast becoming a base for global offshore call centres resulting in a boom in the sales of high-end EPABXs. There was an increase of 18.2 percent in 1998-99 over the previous year. The per-line price of EPABX, which showed a decline in the high-end market, has actually stabilized. At the high-end, the average price remains at around Rs 5,300 and is only 


marginally lower than the 1997-98 figure. 

Tata Telecom, Siemens, Nortel, BPL, Alcatel, and Usha Informatics are dominant players.



Quick deployment of telephone connections, establishment of new corporate offices, and growth of CTI market may help in the growth of this segment.

KTS



This market grew by about 25 percent in 1998-99. The market size of KTS is only 19.6 percent lower than the combined market size of low-end and medium-end
EPABXs.

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Major players are Nitshuko-Enkay and Panasonic. Others in this segment include Tata Telecom, Siemens, Samsung, BPL, LG, and Nortel (through Global).

This market is expected to grow especially in the vertical segments of small non-service industries and the SOHO market.Modems

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The year 1998-99 showed a stupendous growth of 96 percent in the
market for modems. The growth was primarily due to a spurt in the demand for the Internet. There are around 25 players in the field and 150 models with D-Link, 3Com, Apcom, and GVC-Priya being the major players. 33.6 Kbps modems dominate the market.

The size of the modem industry is around Rs 120 crore with about 318,000 modems sold. Q1 results for 1999 reveal the market registered a growth of 1,128,250 in volume and Rs 36.67 crore in value.

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By December 1999, the market is expected to touch the 500,000 units worth Rs 145 crore. 

Basic Services



Total subscribers, as on date, are 24 million. DoT added 37.92 lakh telephone connections in 1998-99, which was 16 percent higher than the previous year. Total number of connections provided by DoT is about 215.9
lakh.

The three private players have about 80,000 subscribers. They are Bharti Telenet in Madhya Pradesh (45,000 subscribers), Hughes Ispat in Maharashtra (15,000 subscribers), and Tata Teleservices (12,000 subscribers) in South India. Essar Commvision, Reliance Telecom, and Shyam Telelink are to launch their services soon.

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Total connections during 1999-2000 are projected to grow up to around 259.84

lakh.

Cellular Phones 



There are around 1.2 million subscribers. For the period ending March 1999, the cellular subscriber base in India had grown by 27 percent in a year. During 1998-99, the subscriber base in the metros actually fell by 5.8 percent. It was the non-metro areas that witnessed growth.

The estimated usage time was180 minutes per month. During the fiscal 1998-99, about 3 lakh cellular handsets were traded. Out of that, legal trading accounted for less than 50 percent.

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The total number of legal handsets sold during fiscal 1998-99 was 1,42,880.

The total revenue-wise market for cellular phones adds up to approximately Rs 144 crore.



Alcatel, Motorola, Nokia, Philips, Siemens, and Ericsson have pocketed about 95 percent of the handset market.

The cellular market is bound to grow with MTNL entering into the fray and the chances of incoming calls becoming free, and increase in subscriber base in circles.

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Satellite Phones



Inmarsat, the satphone service provider in the country, faced a stiff
challenge from Iridium India Telecom Ltd (IITL), which got the licence to operate GMPCS service on 30 October 1998. While Inmarsat focussed on government and public sector users, IITL targeted the individual users. 

The total subscriber base in India on 30 November 1999 was about 1,100. IITL has 300 satphones and Inmarsat has a share of 800. Though IITL got the licence on 30 October 1998, the actual start of service took place in February 1999. The high-cost of the handset coupled with high-airtime cost and a complex tariff slab resulted in poor growth of

Iridium handset world-wide, and its impact was felt in India.

The fact that satphones can be effectively and efficiently used in disaster management and rural telephony applications might help in achieving the projected base of 1,500 in 1999-2000.

Fax



The growth of fax machine market in India has been satisfactory despite the introduction of PC-based fax and the popularity of e-mail (especially in big cities). While Fax is used in major metros more as a backup, small towns are increasingly becoming potential areas of growth. 


Though the penetration of fax has increased, it is looked upon as a necessary but not sufficient mode of communications. The market is witnessing a transition towards digital multifunctional machines that work simultaneously as fax, printer, and scanner. According to Canon estimates, the market for digital devices is expected to grow by 200 percent in 2000.

From a mere 50,000 units in 1994, the number reached to about 710,000 in mid-1999. The trend is expected to continue in 2000. 

Canon, Modi Xerox, and Samsung are the major players in the market. 

CTI/Call Centres



As the world-wide trend towards outsourcing continues unabated, call centres have become a potential business proposition in India. Preference for India is purely economical due to the availability of cheap and skilled manpower and the improved telecom infrastructure. This has led to boom for the call centre solution providers. 

Prominent players are Tata Telecom, Usha Informatics, Alcatel, Parsec Technologies, and Estel telecom. According to latest Nasscom-McKinsey report, the global call centre (customer interaction services) market will be around $2.5 billion in 2004 and it is expected to reach around $4.4 billion by 2008. 

The CTI market grew by about 14.3 percent over the previous year. The total number of ports sold in India in 1998-99 was about 19,000. Dialogic and Tata Telecom are major players in the field.

Contrary to expectations, toll-free lines could not boost the growth of IVR/FOD market.

Unified messaging is expected to pick up due to the increased penetration of e-mail and aggressive pushing of fax-over-IP technology by a few vendors.

In 1999-2000, CTI market is expected to grow in two segments–telecom operators and call

centres.

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