To many i's

Google has just launched its classifieds website Kijiji in India. That may altogether too many i's for comfort but is an interesting indication of how this sector is heating up. The Reed Infomedia JV's first offering was hotfrog.in back in November (see here for how we reported that).

The contentsutra posting notes "they have a ’Rural Marketplace‘ classifieds listing, with listings in local languages - in Hindi and Tamil - though the sellers are still using English to describe the products, so that negates the local language advantage to some extent".

I was also intrigued by a linked they offered to a June story about mobile yellow pages. We've written twice recently (including an about-to-be-publishing Insight) for our partners at EPS on mobile content in Asia. I'm convinced that this sector is about to break out from the SMS, MMS and ringtones segments into much more interesting areas of the information industry. 2007 may be the year it happens and India may be the place. Watch this space.