txtWeb launches its sms based browser in the Indian market
Monday February 14, 2011 , 3 min Read
txtWeb is a one-stop solution for consumers and provides access to a variety of information in a simple SMS format to mobile phone users. This information can be specific to weather, cricket, movie show timings and so forth. Currently, consumers can get updates on their mobiles from a wide range of over 450 applications.
With the World Cup Cricket just around the corner users need to simply type keywords such as @CRICBUZZ to get the latest cricket scores, SMS @WIKIPEDIA HINDI to get the Wikipedia entry on Hindi language or SMS @STOCKTIP to get latest stock tips and trends, SMS @PASSPORT to know the status of your passport application. The user has to SMS a keyword to 92433 42000 to get the information that he/she is looking for which would be delivered to their phone in seconds.
Currently, txtWeb has 20,000 unique mobile users, making 40,000 service requests each day. This platform is seeing huge adoption with the user base doubling every 15 days. txtWeb can be located at www.txtweb.com
India has roughly 700 million mobile phones and only 70 million Internet users out of which only two million are mobile internet users. India sits at the intersection of economic development and technological adoption; this was the best time to make txtWeb available to the masses, especially they who have access to a phone but limited access to the internet.
One other opportunity with txtWeb is for developers to create applications. Creating a SMS-based application will take just 5 hours and adding content to existing applications approximately 5 minutes.
A user can think of txtWeb as an SMS-based browser, and is much more accessible than web-browsers on computers as anyone with a simple feature phone can use it. The user does not pay any premium charges to access this service, only standard SMS rates as per the carrier plan apply.
At its core, txtWeb empowers people by giving them access to information, particularly those who need it the most. Moreover, even those who have internet use txtWeb because it is a more convenient way to get a specific piece of information in seconds.
txtWeb in India has been sponsored by Intuit, a Mountain View, California based company. Building upon Intuit´s legacy of customer-driven innovation, Intuit in India promotes local solutions that will serve large, unmet or underserved needs. Intuit is committed to finding innovative solutions that to improve the lives of our customers, with specific focus on leveraging data and information via the mobile platform.
txtWeb shows promise and potential for making the world’s information available to the hundreds of millions of Indian’s who have mobile phones, but do not have regular access to the Internet.