Smartphone subscriber base grows fourfold

India to have 810 mn subscriptions by 2021: Ericsson

The number of mobile subscriptions in India will touch 1.37 billion by 2021, according to the Ericsson Mobility Report India edition.

The report, which shows key trends on mobile traffic, subscriptions, consumer behaviour and technology uptake specific to India, forecasts that the usage of mobile broadband would increase dramatically with smartphone subscriptions growing four-fold to 810 million and total mobile traffic increasing 15-fold to 4.5 exabytes (EB) a month by 2021. One EB is 1.07 billion gigabyte (GB).

Also, data traffic per active smartphone will rise five-fold from 1.4 GB a month in 2015 to 7 GB a month by 2021. By that year, 99 per cent of the region’s mobile traffic will be from data, says the report.

The report says that smartphone users in India rate data as more important than voice, indicating the strong uptake of data services in the country. Data speed is considered to be the most important factor in determining the network performance and smartphone users’ satisfaction with their operators.

It’s the young smartphone users between 15 and 24 years of age who drive the need for better data speed and data coverage. These users also have a higher inclination to pay a premium for such services, the report notes.

According to the report, 70 per cent of smartphone users are satisfied with the network performance at home while doing instant messaging, web browsing or social networking using mobile internet.

Nearly 60 per cent are satisfied with the network performance at home while streaming videos using mobile internet. However, only 50 per cent have said they are satisfied with the network performance for streaming videos on a smartphone while commuting.

STRONG SIGNAL

• 810 mn:  The usage of mobile broadband would increase dramatically with smartphone subscriptions growing fourfold to 810 mn
• 15 times:  Total mobile traffic would increase 15-fold to 4.5 exabytes a month by 2021
• 5 times: Data traffic per active smartphone will rise five-fold from 1.4 GB a month in 2015 to 7 GB a month by 2021
• 99%: By 2021, 99% of the region’s mobile traffic will be from data

In India, streaming music and watching videos are the most popular forms of entertainment on smartphones. Around 50 per cent of smartphone users stream music on mobile apps every week, and more than one in two internet users watch short online video clips on a weekly basis.

Among Indian smartphone users, WhatsApp Messenger is the top mobile app, in terms of the number of consumers, followed by Google Search and YouTube.

E-commerce apps such as Flipkart, Paytm and Snapdeal are also growing in popularity in the country. File-sharing app Xender is the top mobile app by average monthly data usage, followed by file-sharing app SHAREit and the YouTube video sharing app.

The report says that India grew the most in terms of mobile subscribers with 21 million net additions in the first three months of 2016 (calendar year), followed by Myanmar (five mn), Indonesia (five mn), US (three mn), and Pakistan (three mn).