I do not agree. I think magicbricks mobile is a good application. GPRS users are infact growing. the free service of GPRS which the company provided was a stupidity. GPRS users in vodafone, airtel and idea are growing and more n more people are now availing this service as per a recent survey by juxtconsult.
magicbricks mobile is definetly a step further in the field of technology and as per various sources mobile is the latest “in thing” as far as technology is concerned. even google recently launched adword on mobile including India. read this (http://digital.agencyfaqs.com/perl/digital/news/index.html?sid=19175).. and you will know.. i think magicbricks has done a great job in taking online industry a step forward. n definetly deserves an applause! well done guys!

Gargi: the company didn’t provide free gprs. it was a loophole that users discovered and exploited. Also, please bear in mind that what JuxtConsult did was a survey, and surveys have their own limitations of approximations and extrapolations. Actual numbers need to come from the operators or the regulator—not surveys.

Anyway, try putting a number to GPRS users in India. Cut that down to the number that allows usage of applications with GPRS. Then cut that down to the number looking to buy real estate. That’s your target market. I don’t think there’s going to be 100 percent usage among this target market, so it’s actually - much much much smaller than that for MagicSMS.

Well Gargi with all due regards, there are a number of players in the online space who were way ahead of Magicbricks in launching a mobile application. For instance Yatra.com has a downloadable client application which can be downloaded by sending an SMS YATRA to 52622- have used it a cpl of times and it works brilliantly for me. They also have a WAP portal wap.yatra.com

I think players like Yatra, Magicbricks could be trendsetters in terms of the future of how people would access the web- on their mobile devices !

studies show that there are over 20 million GPRS subscribers. The two key questions however are
1. As Nikhil says, how many GPRS users can use applications?
2. How many really want to use applications?! Most GPRS airtime would be used for email or search I feel.

Some details on the number of GPRS users here:
http://www.dnaindia.com/report.asp?NewsID=1028484&CatID=4

It is way beyond the number of users mentioned above but I agree with Gargi..some insightful concerns..

And also some analysis here:
http://www.mobilepundit.com/2006/05/09/