“The falling cost of handsets and the increase in data consumption in India has led to the fast growth of mobile subscriptions in the country!”
According to a recent report generated by telecom gear maker Ericsson, with 18 million net additions in the third quarter of 2014, India records to have the fastest growth in number of new mobile subscriptions happening all across the world.
Talking about the global scenario, Ericsson Mobility Report for 2014 revealed that 110 million new subscriptions were added during the period, of which 12 million were from China, 5 million from Indonesia and 4 million each from Russia and USA.
”In India, mobile is becoming the first access point for internet for many. This coupled with falling cost of handsets, increased data consumption; improved usability and increasing network coverage are driving growth of mobile subscriptions,”
– Ericsson India Head Chris Houghton.
The continued uptake of Smarthones at a strong pace around the world has made them to account for 65-70% of all mobile phones sold in the third quarter of 2014 while that was around 55% during the corresponding period in 2013.
”Of all mobile phone subscriptions today, around 37 per cent are associated with smartphones, leaving considerable room for further uptake,” the report added.
Moreover, the report also emphasized that with mobile broadband gearing up to bridge the digital gap between the rural and urban populations, the mobile data user demographics are evolving fast in India.
The way proportion of people from lower-income groups downloading apps and streaming video content through the internet on mobile devices is growing now, it has led to the mobile data usage and services to become increasingly mainstream. Besides, as per the forecast made by the report, 45% of Indian population will be covered by LTE or 4G by 2020.
According to the report, India at present has much less mobile broadband spectrum allocated when compared to the markets with high mobile broadband penetration. However, the services as per the report are believed to become more affordable with the release of additional spectrum in the relevant bands and that the spectrum’s harmonization will make a lower cost device ecosystem to evolve.
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”This will play a key role in driving mobile broadband growth in India, and will be an increasingly important driver of mobile networks? overall capacity, quality and user experience,” the report added.
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