Hyderabad: Ever got frustrated accessing a website over mobile and wondered why it doesn’t have a mobile site or an app? To give you an easy mobile browsing experience, technology giant Google is working with small and medium businesses in getting them online as well as on mobile optimised website.
Given that India is set to become the second biggest Internet market after China by 2015 with over 200 million users, mobile presence will become mandatory for companies in the coming years. According to Alan Thygesen, vice-president, global SMB revenue, Google, SMBs ought to have a website as well as a mobile presence to grow. “Even visibility on other media such a YouTube will help businesses grow users significantly,” he added. Moreover, the rapid rise of smartphones is making it inevitable for SMBs and corporates to venture into the mobile space. “Google has brought around 3 lakh SMBs online including mobile. With this, the profitability of these companies has grown 51 per cent,” claimed K. Suryanarayana, head of small medium business, Google India. He added that the company expects to bring another half a million SMBs online by next year.
The growth of e-commerce market too (into a whopping $3 billion currently in a short span) has compelled SMBs to have an online presence, apart from operating offline, said Mr Thygesen. As mobile-focus increases, even digital (mobile) advertising is set to get a fillip, he explained, adding that currently only 7 per cent of the total advertising revenues are contributed by digital advertising. According to Gartner, India and China are expected to play an instrumental role in driving the growth of mobile advertising. “Global mobile advertising is expected to rise 37.40 per cent to touch $18 billion mark in 2014, while the market is expected to reach $41.9 billion by 2017,” the survey said.
