The mobile subscriber numbers in India are growing at more than 90% year on year. A recent TRAI survey showed that current mobile subscribers stands at more than 200 million. Interestingly more than 30 million of these subscribers have GPRS / internet access on their mobiles.
Now with that kind of numbers, it is a huge potential market for any business targeting these 30 million young cash rich Indian consumers.
MagicBricks, one of the leading Indian real-estate portal launched a mobile version of their site- MagicBricks mobile. They are supposedly the First Indian mobile property portal. The users need to download a small application on their GPRS enabled phone and search for properties by property type, budget, and city. They can also view further details of property listings from their cell phones itself.
The important question however is, how successful will this launch be?
Lets get into the shoes of prospective buyer. When a user is looking for a property, will he go on his mobile and check the listings or would he prefer to see it on his PC, shortlist and only then venture out of the house. I think in most cases, the latter will true, however, MagicBricks mobile may be useful when a person is in the vicinity and wants to find out some other properties in that area.
So I would say, it complements their existing portal quite well and for MagicBricks, it serves as a USP and they can call themselves ‘India’s first mobile property portal’.