Microsoft looks to India to boost profits.

[anandk]

Microsoft anticipates a boost to its profits, from the new service it flagged off on Thursday, offering customised domains for the huge market of young Indians, a decade after it acquired Hotmail. The free mail service, coolhotmail.com, uses the same Hotmail platform but will offer over 200 personalised domains to choose from.

Nearly half of India's 1 billion people are below 25 years of age and the country boasts the world's largest English-speaking population spurring dramatic growth in the computer software industry. Internet usage monitoring agency, comScore Networks, in its latest survey found a major surge in the number of Internet users in India in the last year.

More than 21 million Indians above the age of 15 years were using Internet at the end of last January, compared with 16 million just a year ago, comScore said. That 33 percent leap compared with growth of just two percent in the United States.

Economic boom helped lift India's personal computer sales by 32 percent to 5,04 million units in the year to March 31, 2006, according to the Manufacturers' Association for Information Technology.

Source: http://www.ioltechnology.co.za/artic...icleId=5021073

[din]

Good idea, but wondering how many gmail users will switch to those funny named domains for hotmail ids !

[JharuPochaBai]

he he.......those clowns at Microsofts QA center in Hyderabad will testify that. Those people are literally the floor cleaners for Microsoft. Testing is all they do all their lives......feel sorry for them.

How does Microsoft see this, may I ask? Gaming market? Nopes. People will not buy $500 gaming consoles, as that's the monthly wage of many people. Product development? Sorry, Indian's rock at outsourcing, but OSes, office suites, Photoshops, IDEs, Architectures, Programming languages etc have always come from other corners of the world.

Ambitious ideas, but sweet dreams nonetheless.

[akshar]

exactly din. Microsoft cant beat Gmail I feel.

[din]

Do not know when people start making thats very simple and not complicated.

Lot of people use Winamp, that also old ver as its simple, easy to use and no complicated interface.

I think its true for all google products. May be Gmail, may be photo sharing, everything is simple and no distracting / flashy / complicated things around.

Unless MS make the email interface very simple and easy to use, people will not migrate from Gmail. Let it be coolhotmail or frozenhotmail !

Gmail gives POP / SMTP too - atleast for the time being and its a big Plus.

[ravi_9793]

Personally I like new hotmail interface.Much better than yahoo beta mail.

[din]

Yes, new interface is better than Yahoo but not better than gmail when it comes to simplicity.

Anyway the topic is MS is gonna make $$$ out of coolhotmail ! Lets wait n watch..

[ravi_9793]

Originally Posted by din

Yes, new interface is better than Yahoo but not better than gmail when it comes to simplicity.

depend on user.I find hotmail interface better.But gmail has much more options to offer.

[din]

Oh, I am sorry. I forgot to add - "In my opinion"

Yes, it depend on user.

I find gmail interface simple, light and very easy to use.

I use Yahoo / Hotmail / Gmail frequently eventhough my main emails use POP / IMAP.

[The_Devil_Himself]

yea Gmail gets the job done without any fuss made.Almost all google products re like that.Thats what makes it a great company.

[anandk]

forget about microsoft for the moment, see the impressive stats about India. thats what caught my attention actually !

[casanova]

Nice facts Anand. They are catchy.

BTW, these cool ids look cool to make but look funny to share with novice users. They ask to spell it. LOL