iApple Products

Prices | Financials | Company Info | Reports

MUMBAI: Vodafone India on July 29 tied up with Twitter to offer free access to the social networking website's main page through the web or the android mobile platform, becoming the latest such agreement in a bid to increase mobile internet usage on the mobile phone.

Analysts, however, are skeptical on the impact of these tie-ups, at least in the near future, saying that data usage on mobile phones will see a gradual increase only over the next three to five years. The latest announcement comes roughly a month after Bharti Airtel offered something similar with Google.

"The attempt, a modest one arguably, is to promote data usage. Data unlike voice does not have a ready market. It will be a slow and uphill ride to develop that market. However it is still a priority for India," said Mahesh Uppal, director of Com First India. The move will achieve two objectives. The first is to net in some new users and thereby create a new revenue stream. The second is to camouflage technicality data usage is associated with - bytes used, price per KB or MB - behind the application itself.