Mobile Conference 2012
Mr N Lakshmi Narayanan, Vice Chairman, Cognizant Technology Solutions delivering the Special Address at the Mobile Conference 2012 held in Chennai on 2 February 2012. Others seen from L – R : Mr S Sridharan, Convenor, IT, ITeS & Electronics Panel, CII-Chennai Zone; Mr Arun Jain, Founder, Chairman & CEO, Polaris Financial Technology Limited; Mr Anand P Surana, Chairman, Mobile Conference 2012 and Mr S Venkataraman, Head, CII Chennai Zone. Chennai, February 2, 2012: "Apps is the new gold rush, as the growth of smart phone devices has taken over the browser-based PCs and laptops," Mr N Lakshmi Narayanan, Vice Chairman, Cognizant Technology Solutions, said and added that the biggest challenge for business organizations is to create the talent pool that can imagine, and develop specialized, and focused applications, keeping local needs in mind."

Providing his Special Address at Mobile Conference 2012, organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) here today, Mr Narayanan said that there is huge shortage of people who can create apps, and huge demand for apps for local market in local languages. He pointed out that the largest selling business applications in markets like Brazil, Japan, and China are local language applications.

He stressed the need for companies to re-invent the fact that every product development and service delivery should revolve around addressing the customers needs. The new customers are Millennials, people under the age group of 35, who have made products like iPAD a huge success. The Millennials are setting the agenda. To understand their unique needs, companies need to go beyond market surveys and rely on creative thinking, and to attract them, companies need to have appealing stories, he said. In his Special Address, Mr Arun Jain, Founder, Chairman & CEO, Polaris Financial Technology Limited, said that the applications landscape in 2015 will witness the convergence of social commerce, enterprise applications, mobile applications, and corporate collaboration networks.

He stressed the need for companies to get into design thinking to emulate the phenomenal success of Apple through its iPods, and iPads. He explained that the design thinking is different from designing products or management. It is about designing the entire eco-system. From that perspective, Aravind Eye Care can be thought of an apt example of design thinking that created an entire eco-system of eye care using innovative public, private, and local community partnerships, he observed.

Mr Jain also urged Indian companies to focus more on communication. "We might be good at content, contextualization, and connectivity, but without communicating the strengths of our products, it is very difficult to influence the market the way the US companies like Apple and Facebook do", he noted.

In his Welcome Remarks, Mr S Sridharan, Convenor, IT, ITeS & Electronics Panel, CII-Chennai Zone, and Managing Director, TAKE Solutions Limited, said that unlike their predecessors, the new wave of technologies such as cloud computing, mobile applications, and social media are very cost effective that can enable small players to access best systems, and business practices, and empower them to fight against large companies. Companies can no more tie their competency with physical assets. They need to enhance their IT and mobile phone assets that can provide them real time information.

In his Opening Remarks, Mr Anand P Surana, Chairman, Mobile Conference 2012 & CEO, ICEGEN Computing (P) Limited said that in just two years mobile ready sites have grown from 1,50,000 to 3 million. There were 10.9 billion applications downloaded in 2010 and the number is estimated to reach over 76 billion in 2014. The consumers spent US$ 6.2 billion on apps last year, and studies predict that it would grow to US$ 35 billion by 2014.