How will Chromecast make a difference in India?
Chromecast is making news since its inception though it took this Google’s media streaming device one and a half years to reach the Indian market. Chromecast is slated to be sold on e-commerce giant Snapdeal at Rs 2,999 from December 10th midnight, whereas it’s price in the United States is $35( approx. Rs. 2,165).
Google launched Chromecast on July 24th 2013 in the United States. Chromecast is a flash drive like stick which can be plugged into the HDMI port on LED/LCD Tvs. It will allows the users to access the video services like Netflix, Hulu, Youtube and Google Play etc. The point to be noticed is that most of the services in the United Services, which makes Chromecast a reasonably good buy for TV are not available in India.(Not to sound racist but are we backward?) In India, Chromecast supports Youtube and Google Play movies as well as apps from Eros Now, Yupp TV and Spuul.
Airtel and Eros now are quick to latch on to the popularity of Chromecast and are providing special subscription offers to the early birds. Eros Now will give their customers full access to their content for two months which includes Bollywood movies, music and TV shows. Airtel has launched an offer to provide the users free data upto 20GB for 3 months. The question arises that if Chromecast is such a hit in the United States, why does it require so many goodies to tag along.
India is a fickle market for technology and maximum users are after free or cheap services because there is a known mentality of Asians that we can be happy with not so convincing services at a cheaper rate than usual. But, still more than 1.2 billion people means a convincingly bigger market for Chromecast and other relevant technologies.
With Prime Minister Narendra Modi focussing on making India a superpower and making breathtaking changes at the grass root level makes us believe that in a decade or so, India will compete with the United States. More and more investors are eager to have their base in India because of cheap labour, subsidized land prices and a billion people market with more than 60% people below the age of 35 is an opportunity for technology giants.
More and more companies have started taking the risk at such a huge platform because Chromecast would not have been launched in India a decade back, but now the situations have changed for good and the citizens are aware of the world market. People in India and other third world countries have been travelling and visiting the developed countries in search of work and have returned. They have tasted what technology is and by making mobile a necessity, companies like Google, Xiaomi and Micromax have changed the Indian market. These companies have started making their products keeping India in the equation, which was certainly not the case before a decade.
High speed internet and 3G services are available in many rural and urban areas like with a few cities getting access to 4G as well. Places like Delhi and Ahmedabad have witnessed free public wi-fi and it has shaped this dream that India will be looked at differently.
Contract based mobile payment systems is a norm in the west and India was lacking that because more and more people could not lay hands to the technologically advanced iPhones beacuase there was this major budget issue, but Reliance Communications came up with a contract system for iPhone. Though it failed, but they dreamed to start, which must be appreciated and they will come back stronger and provide inspiration to more companies to follow suit.
Coming back to Google Chromecast, mobile app developers need to add support for their apps so that users are able to stream the content on their devices. Video playing on any webpage can be streamed. The above mentioned feature is possible in the beta version but there is a considerable lag in the mirroring. Chromecast also supports Google Nexus and other high end users to mirror their not so tiny(yet small compared to the TV) mobile screens on their TV.
Will Google Chromecast make a revolution to the Television broadcasting industry in India, is yet to be known but it has taken a huge step of development. Mobile app development will see some changes too, when the apps are developed to be streamed on Google Chromecast. We would be happy to see other major comapnies like Amazon’s Fire Stick, Microsoft’s Wireless Display Adapter and Roku Stick to fight it out and emerge victorious in the Indian market. DTH cable companies, you winter is certainly coming.
Nisarg is the Business Development Manager at Nimblechapps, a top mobile game development company and has been with the organisation since its inception in 2014. He likes to update his knowledge on changing trends in technology and marketing and pens his thoughts regarding the same on various blogs and LinkedIn.