VAS to be Rs 20,000 cr industry by 2015

New Delhi, Jul 11 (UNI) With new features being introduced, the value added services (VAS) industry is pegged to touch Rs 20,000 crore by 2015, according to a study by PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Currently, the industry, which is worth about 1.2 billion dollars, will see major growth in the music and mobile gaming segments.

The VAS industry is being driven by SMS (44 per cent), followed by new applications like ringtones and RBTs, GPRS, CLI and other services.

The report was released today at the fourth International Conference and Exhibition of VAS Asia 2008.

''Ringback tones alone have a market of 40 to 50 million users and constitute almost 50 per cent of the VAS market in India and this trend will continue in the near future also,'' said OnMobile CEO Arvind Rao.

According to the report, the mobile phone will soon double up as a smart card, replacing plastic cards. Remittances of funds through mobile phones is expected to fulfill the gap in rural banking infrastructure.

About 3G services, the report says the ''wireless operators see 3G customers more willing than 2G customers to use a variety of multi-media services''.

At present, music and games are downloaded on GPRS or 2.5 G platform.

The projections will be influenced by lower age profile of mobile handset owners and falling costs of handsets with ever richer features.

The expanding of mobile services to rural areas as the future driver of the VAS market, suggests that about 40 per cent of VAS revenues in this category will come from villages and small towns.

UNI SR MP BD2027