Hotspot Movie Cards, Cinema goes mobile...

The Indian retail has been constantly innovating new ideas to woo the consumers and tap the potential of the individual & thier purchase capacity, the latest conception is from Hotspot.

Hotspot is selling Bollywood movies for mobile phones in a 1GB SD card, called as Movie Card, this latest offering is available as a SD card slot for mobile phones. Most mobile phones which are available today in the market have basic video playing capabilities. 

BK Modi's Spice Televentures company HotSpot has announced the launch of Movie Card, which would enable mobile phone users to watch latest Bollywood flicks on 320x240 pixel screen.

"Given the fact that 30-40 per cent of mobile handsets in the country support various movie formats but there are no options for a legal shareable format for movies, we expect this segment to grow rapidly. This is just the first phase of launch of the product in the Indian market and we soon will introduce more than 50 movies on this medium by December 2009," Hotspot CEO Sanjeed Mahajan added.

With the digital format leading all formats of content consumption, is encouraging the potential to tap all possible content right from Mobi-Books, entertainment, news, mobile blogging etc the industry is expected to be around Rs 850 billion by 2010.

Movie Card phase I construct : 

Price is 350 rupees
Memory of 1GB
Resolution (pixels): 320 x 240
SD Card slot
Video formats: MP4 & 3GP

Movies available: Namaste London, Om Shanti Om, Lage Raho Munnabhai, Omkara, Devdas.Games, wallpapers, ringtones will also be available.

This strategy is not new as Nokia N96 was pre-loaded with Om Shanti Om movie, games and wallpapers. The choice of movies offered by Hotspot is limited right now to get any mass adoption. If given a great choice this could set a new revolution.

Domestic & ILD charges may fall

Domestic and International long-distance call charges may dip as the government may accept telecom regulator TRAI's recommendation to allow using calling-cards to provide the subscriber the option to choose his or her operator. 

Introducing calling-cards for making STD and ISD calls is the best alternative to the carrier selection code (choice of operators) as this would save cost, which can be spent on upgrading the networks of existing operators. Using calling-cards will increase competition in the long-distance segment and in turn will benefit over 370 million subscribers, telecom analysts said, adding this may bring down international calling-charges by up to 70 per cent. 

In its recommendations submitted last year, TRAI had said that considering implementation issues like estimating and sharing network setup/upgrade cost by long-distance operators, implementing Carrier Selection may not be justified in the present scenari o and consumers will be better served if the cost is spent on developing next-generation telecom infrastructure. 

The Department of Telecom (DoT) had constituted a committee of senior officials and those from its technical wing Telecom Engineering Consultant (TEC), and has forwarded its report to the Telecom Commission for approval. 

The Telecom Commission is meeting here on Monday to consider the report, sources said, adding the committee has recommended introducing long-distance calling-cards for subscribers to select carriers. 

Long-distance calls will be allowed from both basic and mobile phones. In India there are 23 domestic long-distance and 18 international long-distance service providers, who will benefit from the move.