印度版“微信”的颠覆性

Indian chat app Hike faces an uphill battle to catch up with WhatsApp, the world’s most popular messaging service owned by social network Facebook. But founder¹ Kavin Bharti Mittal says one new feature is proving popular with users across the developing world.

印度聊天应用Hike要赶上社交媒体Facebook旗下、全球人气最高的信息服务WhatsApp，还得经历一番艰苦战斗，但其创始人凯文•巴蒂•米塔尔(Kavin Bharti Mittal，上图)表示，事实证明，一个新功能正受到发展中国家用户的欢迎。

“It came out of an insight that data [in India] is expensive,” he says of Hike Direct, a service added to the group’s main app in October that lets users swap² files such as music and video at high speeds without having to be online.

他在谈到Hike Direct时表示：“它源于（印度）数据通信很贵这个认识。”Hike Direct是该集团去年10月为其主要应用新增的一个服务，让用户在不用上网的情况下高速交换音乐和视频等文档。

India has about 400m internet users, most of whom use the internet via mobile devices. Roughly 250m now own smartphones but even those with expensive devices often save money by rationing³ data use or turning connections off.

印度大约有4亿互联网用户，其中大多数通过移动设备使用互联网。约2.5亿人现在有智能手机，但即便是那些有昂贵设备的人也往往为了省钱而定量使用数据或者断开网络连接。

Perhaps as many as a third of smartphone users have no data connection at all, according to IT analysts⁵ Convergence Catalyst⁶. They rely instead on occasional WiFi or on “side loading” files to their phone using memory cards.

信息技术分析机构Convergence Catalyst表示，或许高达三分之一的智能手机用户完全没有数据连接。他们依赖偶尔的WiFi无线连接或者使用存储卡将文档“侧载”至手机。

Mr Mittal argues Hike Direct is ideal for such users. It works like a faster, more intuitive version of Bluetooth, using an underlying⁷ technology called WiFi Direct that is built into most smartphones. The feature allows any two Hike users to pair their phones and swap files if they are near each other.

米塔尔辩称，Hike Direct非常适合此类用户。它就像是一个速度更快、更直观的蓝牙版本，使用内置于多数智能手机的一种名为WiFi Direct的底层技术。这种功能允许任何两个Hike用户在彼此靠近时配对手机并交换文档。

“Growth for Hike Direct is tremendous,” Mr Mittal says, although he will not reveal actual numbers, saying only that users have so far swapped⁸ about 10m files.

米塔尔表示：“Hike Direct的增长是巨大的。”不过他没有透露实际数目，只是说用户迄今交换了大约1000万份文档。

More generally, about 100m use Hike’s main messenger globally, far behind the roughly 900m claimed by WhatsApp. But Hike enjoys a comfortable second place in India, and says it is growing rapidly elsewhere.

整体而言，全球大约有1亿人使用Hike的主要信息服务，远远落后于WhatsApp宣称的近9亿用户。但Hike在印度的用户数量轻松地排名第二，该公司表示其他地方的用户数量正在迅速增长。

Mr Mittal’s father is tycoon⁹ Sunil Bharti Mittal, founder of Bharti Airtel, India’s leading telecoms group by market share. Hike is a joint venture between Bharti and SoftBank, a Japanese telecoms group that has invested heavily in Indian start-ups.

米塔尔的父亲是电信大亨、巴蒂电信(Bharti Airtel)的创始人苏尼尔•巴帝•米塔尔(Sunil Bharti Mittal)。按市场份额计算，巴蒂电信是印度领先的电信集团。Hike是巴蒂电信和大举投资于印度初创企业的日本电信集团软银(SoftBank)成立的合资企业。

Some industry figures view the technology underpinning¹⁰ Hike Direct as a potentially disruptive force — especially if Hike and its rivals allow many users to pair phones, rather than just two at a time, so effectively creating an impromptu¹¹ local sharing network.

一些业内人士将支持Hike Direct的技术视为潜在的颠覆性力量，尤其是如果Hike及其竞争对手让多名（而不仅限于一次两名）用户配对手机的话，那将实际上创建一个临时的本地共享网络。

“That is why this could be a brilliant concept, and one uniquely suited for India,” says Roy de Souza, chief executive of Zedo, an India-based digital advertising¹² business. He says that in India even rich people turn off their data connections. “What they really want is a kind of WhatsApp that doesn’t cost them data. This could be it.”

印度数字广告企业Zedo的首席执行官罗伊•德索萨(Roy de Souza)表示：“那就是为什么这可能是一个绝佳的概念，一个特别适用于印度的概念。”他说，在印度，即便是富人也会断开他们的数据连接。“他们真正想要的是一种不用耗费他们数据流量的WhatsApp，Hike Direct可能就是这么个服务。”

Services like this could be especially popular on university campuses, Mr de Souza says, or in small office buildings. But Mr Mittal has bigger ideas. “Eventually, you could think of this connecting together a whole rural village that isn’t online,” he says.

德索萨表示，像这样的服务可能在大学校园或者小型写字楼尤为受欢迎。但米塔尔有更为宏大的创意。他说：“最终而言，你可能想让它将没有联网的整个村子联在一起。”

Making this happen will not be easy. So far, the broader network concept is untested. Any company developing the technology could face legal difficulties, given its probable use as a way of sharing pirated music and videos. Setting up a network would also drain the batteries of connected phones, a deterrent¹³ factor.

实现这一想法并不容易。建立更大范围网络的概念迄今没有经过测试。鉴于这种技术很可能被用于共享盗版音乐和视频，任何开发这种技术的公司可能面临法律上的困难。建立网络也将让连接起来的手机更快耗尽电量，这是一个让人望而却步的因素。

It would help if other services beyond Hike adopted it, too, says Jayanth Kolla, analyst⁴ at Convergence Catalyst. “As a feature, so far it is a useful addition to Hike, but it isn’t disruptive yet,” he says.

Convergence Catalyst的分析师贾扬特•科拉(Jayanth Kolla)表示，如果Hike以外的其他服务也采用这种技术，那将会有所帮助。“作为一个功能，迄今这是对Hike的有用补充，但它还不具有颠覆性，”他表示。

“But I would expect other chat apps like WeChat in China and Line [based in Japan] to add something like this soon, and then it could really take off.”

“但我预计中国的微信(WeChat)和日本的Line等其他聊天APP将会很快增添类似功能，随后它就可能真的起飞。”