Here are 10 fascinating facts about mobile in India, submitted by Rajiv Hiranandani, co-chair of newly founded Indian chapter of the Mobile Marketing Association India and co-founder of mobile entertainment company Mobile2Win.
To find out more about the world’s second largest mobile market (after China) and one of the most exciting, also see The insider’s guide to mobile Web marketing in India
* Sources at the end
1. There are 488 million mobile subscribers in India – about 41 percent of the population, according to the Indian Regulator TRAI, November 2009. That is equivalent to 7 percent of the global population, which is 6.7 billion according to the World Bank.
2. It is growing fast. There were over 16 million new mobile subscribers in October 2009. Compared to this time last year, subscriber numbers are up 50 percent.
3. In urban areas mobile penetration is almost at saturation point with 270 million mobile subscribers, so growth is predominantly from rural areas.
4. There were 101 million handsets sold in the year to June 2009 (an increase of 6.7 percent on the previous year). Nokia dominates handset sales (56.8 percent), followed by Samsung (7.7 percent) and LG (5.4 percent), according to IDC India.
5. When choosing a mobile-phone package the two most critical factors are: a) unlimited Internet access and b) more SMS-based value-added services.
6. The most popular mobile search provider is Google followed by Yahoo. Of the 18.5 million urban mobile users who use search, 5.76 million use Google and 4.58 million use Yahoo.
7. The favourite social network is Orkut (visited by 11.4 percent of mobile users), followed by Facebook (6.7 percent) and hi5 (6 percent). Mobile social networking is most popular in Delhi, followed by Mumbai and Chennai.
8. SMS contests are very popular. 59.5 percent of female and 49.1 percent of male mobile subscribers have taken part in one to three SMS contests; 25.1 percent of men and 19.7 percent of women have taken part in four to five, and 25.7 percent women and 20.8 percent of men have take part in over five. These SMS campaigns are mostly TV related – all reality TV shows and song/dance contests choose their winners via SMS. 86.3 percent said they’d entered a TV-based SMS campaign; followed by newspaper-related campaigns (50.3 percent) and Internet-related (48.9 percent).
9. The most popular SMS-based services are jokes (accessed by 52 percent of mobile users), astrology (48 percent), news updates (44 percent), jobs (43 percent) and sports updates (42 percent).
10. Yahoo Messenger is the most used IM application. Of mobile IM users, 18.3 percent use Yahoo and 17.8 percent use Google Talk.
Sources:
MediaMania
TRAI
Emergic
Trek.in
Don’t miss:
Leave a Reply