Reliance Jio has changed India's internet landscape for good: Google's Rajan Anandan

Anandan said data consumption by Jio customers is 40-50 times higher than the average 3G smartphone

The launch of Reliance Jio in September has significantly accelerated the adoption of smartphones in the country, which crossed 100 million daily active smartphone users around the same time.

Data consumption by Jio customers is 40-50 times higher than the average 3G smartphone user sai

 

d Rajan Anandan, Managing Director at Google India, who expects the number of daily active users to double next year.

"Five years ago we had less than 10 million total smartphones users (in India). The pace of growth, thanks a lot to Jio, has accelerated recently and we're well north of 100 million daily actives," said Anandan, at the Global Mobile Internet Conference in Bengaluru on Thursday.

India is said to be home to over 250 million smartphone users today, with the top 100 million users consuming close to 6GB of data on average per month. While majority of that data is still consumed over Wi-Fi, Anandan expects Jio to boost mobile data consumption across the 250 million and growing smartphone user base.

Jio, which has invested a claimed $20 billion to set up the largest 4G network across India, sells 1 GB of 4G data at just Rs 50. This coupled with an introductory offer making all voice calls free has resulted in fast paced growth of the service which has in-turn boosted the overall smartphone market.

"The interesting thing about India is that anything that's free works and it works at scale. What happens when Jio starts charging? Obviously consumption per user will come down and some of these users might not want to pay, but it has changed the Internet landscape in India for good," added Anandan.

However, while smartphone adoption and usage might be on the rise, services still have a hard time retaining users given that the country has the highest app uninstall rates in the world. One out of nine apps that are installed by users in India get uninstalled within 6 weeks.

As smartphones continue to get cheaper, adoption will grow, but owing to their reducing price tags the specification and most importantly storage on these phones will be low. "What India needs is affordable smartphones on which internet can work in its entirety," he said.

While apps will continue to be the dominant way in which Indians consume content, developers will have to figure out ways to navigate the troubles that come with low-cost devices. Building ways to access services offline as well as in local languages will further boost India's smartphone and Internet adopting in the years to come.