Smartphone usage in developing countries such as India is galloping at a rapid pace with decreasing device costs, wide range of features offered by today’s smartphones and the users intent to stay connected & access social networking sites on the move.
The State of Smartphone Usage in India – Designed & Conceptualized by Crayon’d.
A recent study by Nielsen in association with Informate Mobile intelligence on overall smartphone usage and device preferences in India revealed that 6 out of 10 smartphone users in India prefer a smart phone which runs on android as it is an open platform and is available across multiple brands and prices. 21% of the users still use Symbian as Indian smartphone users had a Nokia obsession which has and had many devices which runs on Symbian, but this is rapidly changing now as smartphones which run on even powerful operating systems such as iOS and android are available with various brands and affordable prices. Symbian is followed by Windows , Blackberry and IOS which have single digit market shares. IOS usage in the country is certainly on the rise with Apple reporting a profit of 400% over the last quarter.
Usage of tablets and its adoption is also on the rise. 3% of the users polled already own a tablet and 11% of the users are intending to purchase one. The study also revealed that consumers spend an hour more on their tablets than on their android smartphones.
Voice and text communication via Smartphones is declining with only 25% of the users using it for voice calls and texting. Multimedia, games, apps and internet browsing are the main reasons why consumers use their smartphones. Apps developed by Google are among users favourites with 25% of users time on apps is being spent on Google play, YouTube, Gmail, Gtalk, Google Maps etc. This is mainly because of the large android user base in the country. Games(58%) is the popular paid apps category with nearly 3 out of 5 users paying for it, chat/instant messaging (53%) and streaming music (45%) are the other popular paid app categories among the users.
Almost half of the smartphone users have no Mobile internet connectivity or active access to data. Youth are the quick to adapt to data connectivity on their smartphones as more than half of the smartphone users are the under the age of 25.