[amitk26]

Originally Posted by poloman

Can some one explain the logic behind moves such as these??
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/t...w/46818792.cms
I am not at all comfortable with mobile net or mobile app for making online purchases? Why are these companies forcing customer to move to mobile? This is unheard of even in developed economies. I may completely boycott eCommerce sites if this turns out true.

There is a huge intersection between poor broadband and poor retail avenues that is in tier 2 and 3 cities. Almost whatever is available on-line can be purchased off-line in big cities and on-line shopping is just a convenience factor, however if you are in a small city , You have to buy things on-line because there is simply no mall or local shops never keep that many choices in stock.

I remember 1.5 decade back in my home town whenever we asked for something little un-usual or a different design in local market the usual answer used to be " monday ko a jayega" or "Delhi se mangwa denge , parson tak" , Shopkeepers keeps minimum inventory of goods that are not fast moving and order only once they have a customer.

Second factor is once people are more comfortable with mobile they seldom switch on PC/laptop unless absolutely essential for something like a huge spreadsheet or document to ed
it. Mobiles can be used anywhere . Can you check Facebook while sitting in toilet on a laptop ? Same goes for on-line shopping.

Yesterday's tech savy people that is above 35 years of age are older folks today.
Most housewives ,students are more mobile savy , Students of yesterday are workers today so people who have entered in workforce in last 5- 8 years use mobiles more than laptops.

Similarly people above 60 like my father's generation who were never comfirtable with laptop use mobile more.

So primarily laptop users are actually a decreasing lot.

About the devices , Have you noticed that in India people buy big screen devices more than other markets ? Since mobile has become primary internet device large screen is preferred

[poloman]

Originally Posted by amitk26

There is a huge intersection between poor broadband and poor retail avenues that is in tier 2 and 3 cities. Almost whatever is available on-line can be purchased off-line in big cities and on-line shopping is just a convenience factor however if you are in a small city , You buy things because there is simply no mall or local shops never keep that many choices in stock.

....

Try ordering something on these ecommerce sites from a small town and see how their attitude changes. Cash on delivery is non existent even in most of tier 2 cities and places they perceive as problematic. Most of courier guys wont deliver at your doorstep. You have to go to their local office and collect the item however big or small the item may be. So eCommerce is mainly an urban phenomenon in India. I feel this ordering on mobile is mostly happening from urban hip crowd in 20-30 age bracket.

[amitk26]

Originally Posted by poloman

Try ordering something on these ecommerce sites from a small town and see how their attitude changes. Cash on delivery is non existent even in most of tier 2 cities and places they perceive as problematic. Most of courier guys wont deliver at your doorstep. You have to go to their local office and collect the item however big or small the item may be. So eCommerce is mainly an urban phenomenon in India. This ordering on mobile is mostly happening from urban hip crowd in 20-30 age bracket.

Depends on the place actually at-least in M.P it is not a problem as per feedback from my parents and relatives. After all if e-commerce site say that they have large portion of clientèle in tier 2 city why would they lie ?
Whatsapp has around 70 million users in India and lots of them are in tier 2 and 3 urban centres .

Anyone who is comfortable enough with mobile phone to use whatapp qualifies to be a mobile phone e-commerce consumer.

[Prowler]

Originally Posted by poloman

May be I am old fashioned. I am not comfortable with mobile phone other than calling and checking and replying very important mails. For everything else I switch to my laptop. It is not a fear of unknown, but a matter of convenience of seeing and scrolling things in bigger screen, using mouse for pointing and typing on a physical keyboard.
...
Lot of chatter is going on for net neutrality. Time to talk about device neutrality also.

I am with you on this.
Even gmail doesn't work properly in my iPad. I have to download Chrome for iOS and use to view one gmail mail in a hurry. Bank sites don't work in mobiles as well as they do in a normal browser. I use a windows Phone and it doesn't allow me to see the last 10 transactions as easily as it does in a desktop browser. May be they are not well designed for all kinds of mobile browsers.
At the end of the day, I still have to lug my laptop around. I still want to check the Payment gateway's SSL certificate's authenticity before I make the payment online.

[NetfreakBombay]

Originally Posted by poloman

May be I am old fashioned. I am not comfortable with mobile phone other than calling and checking and replying very important mails. For everything else I switch to my laptop. It is not a fear of unknown, but a matter of convenience of seeing and scrolling things in bigger screen, using mouse for pointing and typing on a physical keyboard.

In a year or two, users will be able to run the same Mobile app on desktop. You can already do that via bit of DIY:

http://www.theverge.com/2015/4/3/833...inux-chrome-os

Originally Posted by poloman

I work in a IT company and yet to find a friend or colleague who orders on mobile phone.

That demographic is almost always in front of two (or more ) 22 inch+ monitors. They don't need a mobile for ordering.

It is the tier two cities where even power supply or BSNL's broadband is erratic; mobile penetration is higher.

[amitk26]

Originally Posted by Prowler

I am with you on this.
Even gmail doesn't work properly in my iPad. I have to download Chrome for iOS and use to view one gmail mail in a hurry. Bank sites don't work in mobiles as well as they do in a normal browser. I use a windows Phone and it doesn't allow me to see the last 10 transactions as easily as it does in a desktop browser. May be they are not well designed for all kinds of mobile browsers.
At the end of the day, I still have to lug my laptop around. I still want to check the Payment gateway's SSL certificate's authenticity before I make the payment online.

Ha ha now you know why more then 95% of market is with Android in India.
And why people outside EU and US in high end device market also choose
Android devices compared to "other" OS devices.

Android vendors have worked hard to cater to "rest of the world" requirements and most app and mobile websites target Android user in India.

Psudo tech media always derided and asked who needs Note , II, II , IV , A 5+ inch screen, browser Compliance to full 3GPP JS set the answer always was India & China , SEA, MENA and Brazil in that order.

[nareshov]

Originally Posted by binand

...
Your discomfort with m-commerce: I don't see why, and it is possibly just fear of the unknown; if you were to list the reasons for your fear maybe those could be alleviated. Boycotting e-commerce completely sounds to me like throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

Let's see:
- a lot of apps ask for more permissions than they really need which raises my eyebrows
- unlike a browser on the desktop, I don't have an easy way of telling whether the communication is happening over a secure (SSL) line or not (especially when my credit card data is made to move over the wire)
- I don't know whether any third-party cookies (if HTTP(S)) are being set or not which I typically disable on the desktop
- I can't easily pop open a "web inspector" if needed (rare, but useful)

[binand]

Originally Posted by poloman

I am not comfortable with mobile phone other than calling and checking and replying very important mails. For everything else I switch to my laptop. [...]
I work in a IT company and yet to find a friend or colleague who orders on mobile phone.

You are falling in to the trap of refuting statistics with anecdotal evidence. Quite obviously there are a lot of people out there who think the opposite (I am one myself).

Originally Posted by poloman

Do we have figures on 3G/4G users in India? Min 3G is required for a good mobile internet experience. So I suspect most of the mobile data may be originating from broadband WiFi itself.

I pay Rs. 1500 per month for home broadband and Rs. 250 per month for 3G. I expect a decent modern PC to cost around Rs. 20-25 K (without Windows); the corresponding mobile cost is maybe Rs. 6000 or so. The economics is so heavily loaded in favour of mobile usage in India.

As for hard numbers, please check page 12 of this document:

http://www.trai.gov.in/WriteReadData...TSD-Dec-14.pdf

15 million wired broadband subscribers, 70 million mobile broadband subscribers.

[poloman]

Originally Posted by binand

....As for hard numbers, please check page 12 of this document:

http://www.trai.gov.in/WriteReadData...TSD-Dec-14.pdf

15 million wired broadband subscribers, 70 million mobile broadband subscribers.

This was the kind of data I was looking for. So you may be right if this is true.
But I still feel majority of mobile net users are social networking and whatsapp users. SMS senders are now almost nil. All of these guys have move on to a cheap data plan to send unlimited messages on whatsapp and similar platforms. May be a fraction of that doing online purchases too. But still 80%, I doubt.

[amitk26]

Originally Posted by poloman

This was the kind of data I was looking for. So you may be right if this is true.
But I still feel majority of mobile net users are social networking and whatsapp users. SMS senders are now almost nil. All of these guys have move on to a cheap data plan to send unlimited messages on whatsapp and similar platforms. May be a fraction of that doing online purchases too. But still 80%, I doubt.

well interestingly FB users have great intersection with on-line purchasers through mobiles. See how many advertisements Facebook pushes in the mobile app Jabaong , pepperfry , carrotlane advertisements are regular and hosts other of newer e-com websites pay Facebook for mobile advertising so there must be some conversion else why would they not save money by just pushing add to the desktop websites.
About the concerns on HTTPs and certificate validity most of this junta have no clue what is HTTPs they may not even have credit card and most use COD.

[Lalvaz]

Originally Posted by nareshov

Let's see:
- a lot of apps ask for more permissions than they really need which raises my eyebrows
...

You hit the nail on the head. Why do these apps ask for excessive permissions?

As per Flipkart's privacy policy (http://www.flipkart.com/s/privacypolicy), its very clear that they are seeking and storing our personal data on their servers. Now, if you compound that by seeking additional data that you have no need for, it simply increases the risk by exposing even more private data. IMO, they simply do not understand the risk of data theft, and hence are trying to seek as much information about their customers as they can. And since no one really reads the user agreement, they get away with it.

You might also want to read this slightly old but still relevant report on the risks of insecure apps on google play store.
https://www.bit9.com/files/1/Pausing...ctober2012.pdf

[amitk26]

Originally Posted by Lalvaz

if you compound that by seeking additional data that you have no need for, it simply increases the risk by exposing even more private data. IMO, they simply do not understand the risk of data theft,

Sometimes they do not bother to understand anything at all , Or even if someone makes them understand just push it under the carpet is easy way out. If the objective is to scale fast and have an exit strategy , Quick and dirty becomes moto and considerations like app security of data privacy takes back seat.

I am not talking specifically about any particular e-commerce start-up however at some point these players need to realize they are no longer a start-up and need to behave , design , develop like a stable long time player and the process need to start from probably recruitment of people with a different skill set.

[binand]

Originally Posted by nareshov

Let's see:
- a lot of apps ask for more permissions than they really need which raises my eyebrows
...

Valid concerns, but my personal view is that it is all the hidden cost of buying into the e-commerce bandwagon. Without strong privacy laws in India all this stuff goes under the radar and is here to stay. One has the choice of voting with one's feet, of course. Personally, I keep Location services off on my mobile devices unless I explicitly need it (hiring an Uber or navigating with Waze, for example).

Ref SSL, that is the least of my worries as I know that a merchant is allowed to integrate with Visa/Mastercard only if he goes through a PCI-DSS assessment; which would surely fail if they weren't doing it correctly.

[Thad E Ginathom]

Originally Posted by amitk26

Similarly people above 60 like my father's generation who were never comfirtable with laptop use mobile more.

Worst thing is when I hear a pretty girl say that

But seriously, many of us in that age group worked with computers --- but were a bit too old to really sign up to the mobile phone thing. That applies to me.

[callvvijay]

Team, not sure if this is the right thread to post this question. Was contemplating between posting it here versus posting it in the 'Android Thread'.

I recently got a Moto-G2 for my wifey and she is looking out for a designer flip-cover (magnetic type - the one with sensor for auto-awake function). She is not interested in the plain-black types. Any sites where I can get this?

Thanks!