India Has a SMS-based Mobile Browser with Facebook, Bollywood, and Cricket

sms-browser

India , a country where feature phones still dominate now has a SMS-based mobile browser, thanks to Indiatimes and Shorthand Mobile. Although the SMS browser doesn’t allow users to surf the web as freely as a conventional web browser, it offers access to a range of Indiatimes’ content and SMS apps including Facebook, Deals, Bollywood , Dating Chat, Cricket, and News.

The SMS-based browser essentially would provide access to more SMS based apps to ensure content accessibility is as close as having a mobile browser on a data-enabled smartphone.

“There are around 575 million active mobile subscribers in India and most of them are still using low end or feature phones. Indiatimes’ Insta SMS Browser is positioned to cater to such users and provide them easy access to content in an interactive manner without the need of GPRS data plans. We are working with OEMs to have Insta SMS pre-embedded in handsets so that users can easily discover and use the app,” said Ajay Vaishnavi , Director, Telecom, Times Internet Limited.

To access the browser, user can either send an SMS with text BROWSER to 58888 or log on here for download.

Shorthand Mobile, the engineer behind the SMS-based mobile browser has also worked with brands like Google , Facebook and Amazon to help build their textapps. While everyone is betting on smartphones, Shorthand smartly positions itself to serve feature phone users who are still the dominant lot in many countries. Nokia also sees the same trend as it targets Indonesian feature phone users by providing health, agriculture, entertainment and education information without the need for data service.