A question from Rupayan Chatterjee towards the end of OnMobile Global's conference call was like a breath of fresh air - since OnMobile owns the voice recognition business Telisma, why doesn't it look at a product that can provide mobile commerce on voice: "add a Flipkart on voice recognition, where a guy can ask for a book, and you allow for a transaction, and the book is delivered." Responding, OnMobile CEO Arvind Rao pointed out that the company has music search (adding for good measure that "We are the largest deployer for music search in India today"), and the game plan is exactly this. "We started with music, and will move to the next category." But from OnMobile's top management's comment on its conference call, it appears that it really doesn't want to be an independent digital service provider. I asked the company on the call about any plans to reduce its dependency on telecom operators, and Rao had this to say: "Our core bread and butter is the telecom operators worldwide. There's a big debate in the world about whether telecom operators are going to die. We believe they have very strong last mile advantages, and they're missing a managed services pioneer like us. On the other hand, because of acquisition of Dilithium, which is being used by the likes of Yahoo, and we're working a couple of cable companies in North America and Media companies. These are not a material part of our business, but five years from…
