Mobile Internet users to touch 130 million mark in a year

Mobile users to spend 40 % of bill amount on data services

With affordable Internet-enabled tablets and smartphones flooding the market, nearly 130 million users are set to access the Internet in the country through such mobile devices by next year.

According to a joint study by the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) and IMRB, India will have 130.6 million mobile internet users by March 2014.

In December 2012, the number of users accessing Internet through mobile devices was 87.1 million. These mobile devices include laptops with dongles, tablet, dongles that connects to Internet .

According to the report, mobile Internet users who accessed the Net through mobile phones are warming up to spending a considerable amount of money on data services. While online games are accessed by nearly 50 per cent of the Mobile Internet users, less than 30 per cent of users read online news and watch online videos, it said.

The report finds that an average monthly bill of a user who accesses Internet on mobile devices is Rs 460 of which Rs 198 is spent towards internet expenses.

“This is a very healthy trend as it shows willingness of the users to spend nearly 40 per cent of the bill towards Internet access. The rest of the amount is spent on voice services,” the report said.

Besides, Email, social networking services (SNS) and messengers have high usage among mobile internet users.

The data may cheer up the mobile service providers who for long were pushing high-margin data services to the customers. The voice services is a low margin business as the tariff for voice calls are very low in India.