Samsung enters education sector

Samsung enters classrooms with smart solutions

Durables and appliances brand Samsung India has forayed into the education business with the company introducing its interactive e-boards for classrooms. The company is targeting 20,000 educational institutions pan-India to deploy its smart solution.

Samsung said it expects a revenue of $100 million to come from the IT and mobility business during 2011 (January-December period). At present, the vertical earns a revenue of $38 million.

As schools transitions towards a purposeful e-learning environment, Samsung e-board offers new technologies to increase participations and classroom interactivity. The interactive e-board will make classroom experience more interactive.

According to estimates, the kindergarten to grade 12 (K-12) market in India accounts for a substantial share of the total education market. This segment is estimated to be worth Rs 20 billion and is expected to be grow at 14 per cent per annum.

E-learning market in India, though a niche category, comprises digital content in private schools, ICT programme of Government for Government schools and online education market. Several companies in the past have ventured into the business. Educomp, Dell and Smart Technologies are among those who provide content and also deploy smart solutions.

The company expects at least 25 per cent of its revenues to come from the education sector. The education initiatives have been placed under four major categories including Smart Classroom, Smart Teacher, Smart Student and Smart School, among others.

The company will be working with 15 channel partners to deploy its product and will be present in 22 cities by September.

New Telecos add new subscribers base

New telcos add 14% new subscribers in Jan-Nov

New operators, including Uninor, MTS, STel, Etisalat DB and Videocon, which were given unified access service (UAS) licences in 2008, have together captured 14 per cent of the incremental share in addition of new subscribers over the last one year. This is contrary to the perception that new players have not been able to make inroads into the Indian telecom market.

Incremental share essentially means the net new addition of subscribers each month.

These numbers go up to 24 per cent if the subscriber base of Tata Teleservices’ GSM service, launched after it got a licence under dual technology in 2008, is included.

While Uninor garnered 7.3 per cent of incremental share, Videocon got 3.3 per cent and MTS 2.3 per cent, according to Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) figures for the January-November period.

Uninor has a total subscriber base of 16.2 million, MTS has 7.8 million, while Videocon has 6.7 million users.

New Entrants
Operator	Subscribers (in mn)	Mkt share (%)	Incremental share(%)
Uninor	16.2	2.2	7.3
MTS	7.8	1.1	2.3
Videocon	6.7	0.9	3.3
STel	2.1	0.3	0.9
Etisalat	0.1	0.0	0.1
Tata GSM	38.2	5.5	12.0
Source: For January-November 2010

These operators were given licences in January 2008. The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has issued notices to many of these new players for not meeting rollout obligations of the licence allotment and imposed penalties.

The incremental share of new players is substantially high in circles like Mumbai (29.7 per cent), Haryana (21.1 per cent), Kolkata (21.1 per cent) and Tamil Nadu (20.9 per cent).

The new operators have been under a cloud because many of them have not rolled out services as stipulated in the licence agreement.

There is a clear imbalance in the subscriber base of new operators, with Uninor, MTS, Videocon and Tata DOCOMO together accounting for 22.9 per cent of incremental share and Etisalat DB and S Tel lagging with just 1 per cent.

How mathematics should be taught to younger generations