MUMBAI: Various studies have highlighted the increase of smartphones and tablets in the country which in return has been a boon for the Indian telecom industries.
There are nearly 850 million mobile subscribes in the country according to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India and while the total mobile services market revenue in India currently is $ 29.8 billion, it can reach $37 billion by 2017.
Mobile accounts for 90 per cent of digital music consumption and 73 per cent internet penetration is fuelled by the proliferation of smartphones, there is an upswing in the digital consumption of media content in India.
With an aim to cash in on this digital wave Hungama Digital Media Entertainment has launched a PRO service for its mobile app which the company claims has grown exponentially. The service introduces a new feature, caching of content which has been developed specifically for markets like India.
The app was launched last year in April with over five and a half million installations.
What lead to the upgradation of the app is based on consumer feedback. The company believes that today people don’t just listen to music but watch it as well. Hence, with the PRO service Hungama has become one of the first platforms to offer integrated music video streaming on its app.
What is its USP? It allows content to be saved on the consumer's device which can be accessed without an internet connection!
“For the first six to seven months of the Hungama app, we got constant feedback from the consumers with regards to high consumption of data on data packs. We realised that consumers are facing a lot of problems related to quality of connectivity and congestion at certain places which we have changed with the new version,” asserts Hungama Digital Media Entertainment COO Sidharth Roy.
On the basis of feedback, the company has also decided to make videos available online apart from just audio.
So if a customer upgrades to the premium version, he/she can encash on entire video streaming plus unlimited access to the audio and video from the offline cache.
Moreover, the price point has remained untouched. “The app was launched with the premium tag price of Rs 99 and Rs 110 on Google wallet price point. The price point today also remains the same. We have built the entire feature holding the same price point,” says Roy.
The service is ideal for consumers who rely on wi-fi connections to stream their content. The feature is aimed at helping consumers reduce the data usage for the same content, thereby encouraging them to increase their engagement with the platform.
The company is also providing free version to a customer where he can experience three songs offline and then move to the paid version. It also provides 30 days of free trial.
The feature is available on the Hungama app for iOS and Android versions.
