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India to have 1.4 bn mobile subscribers by 2020: Report
New Delhi: India will have at least 1.4 billion mobile subscribers by 2020, resulting in a population penetration of 100 percent, says a report released by Swedish communication technology and services provider Ericsson.
According to the report, the growth will primarily be driven by the increasing affordability of devices and services.
“Maintaining and improving quality of the user experience is likely to be at the top of Indian operators’ agenda over the coming years,” Chris Houghton, India head at Ericsson, said.
“A network with a mix of macro sites, micro sites and small cells will need to be established to manage coverage, capacity and network performance for the best user experience and to meet the growing demand for data services,” he added.
The report also observed that GSM/EDGE subscriptions will decline from 780 million in 2014 to around 510 million by 2020.
“The GSM/EDGE subscription base is predicted to peak in 2015 and decline thereafter as subscribers migrate to 3G services,” the report revealed.
Also, the report claims that WCDMA/HSPA subscriptions will increase from over 120 million in 2014 to around 620 million by 2020 due to the increase in proportion of WCDMA/HSPA subscriptions from 13 percent to 45 percent.
On the other hand, LTE subscriptions is scripted to reach more than 230 million by 2020, forming around 17 percent of the total subscription base, as per the report. Currently, GSM/EDGE technology has the widest reach in India, with 95 percent population coverage.
The report also unveiled trends of Indian consumers. “On average, Indian smartphone users spend over three hours a day on their smartphones and 25 percent of them check their phones over 100 times a day,” it said.
As per the report around one third of the time spent on smartphones is used for apps, primarily chat, social media, and gaming.
“There has been an increase of over 20 percent in the overall time spent on smartphones and around a 65 percent increase in app usage since 2012, when Ericsson ConsumerLab measured these parameters,” it said.
Interestingly, it also points out that as consumers watch more content, their tolerance for delays will decrease.
“Nearly 65 percent of mobile broadband users prefer to stream rather than download videos on smartphones and 4 out of 10 videos played have issues with buffering and stalling.”
The report also points out that monthly mobile data consumption is expected to increase 18-fold by 2020 over current levels.
“Across all mobile technologies in India, monthly data usage per subscriber is still relatively low, primarily because of a sub-optimal 2G and 3G user experience. This is caused by the inability of 2G networks to support high-bandwidth services, insufficient 3G network coverage, and a lack of relevant local content,” it said.
International online casino Casino Days has published a report sharing their internal data on what types and brands of devices are used to play on the platform by users from the South Asian region.
Such aggregate data analyses allow the operator to optimise their website for the brands and models of devices people are actually using.
The insights gained through the research also help Casino Days tailor their services based on the better understanding of their clients and their needs.
Desktops and Tablets Lose the Battle vs Mobile
The primary data samples analysed by Casino Days reveal that mobile connections dominate the market in South Asia and are responsible for a whopping 96.6% of gaming sessions, while computers and tablets have negligible shares of 2.9% and 0.5% respectively.
The authors of the study point out that historically, playing online casino was exclusively done on computers, and attribute thе major shift to mobile that has unfolded over time to the wide spread of cheaper smartphones and mobile data plans in South Asia.
“Some of the reasons behind this massive difference in device type are affordability, technical advantages, as well as cheaper and more obtainable internet plans for mobiles than those for computers,” the researchers comment.
Xiaomi and Vivo Outperform Samsung, Apple Way Down in Rankings
Chinese brands Xiaomi and Vivo were used by 21.9% and 20.79% of Casino Days players from South Asia respectively, and together with the positioned in third place with a 18.1% share South Korean brand Samsung dominate the market among real money gamers in the region.
Cupertino, California-based Apple is way down in seventh with a user share of just 2.29%, overshadowed by Chinese brands Realme (11.43%), OPPO (11.23%), and OnePlus (4.07%).
Huawei is at the very bottom of the chart with a tiny share just below the single percent mark, trailing behind mobile devices by Motorola, Google, and Infinix.
The data on actual phone usage provided by Casino Days, even though limited to the gaming parts of the population of South Asia, paints a different picture from global statistics on smartphone shipments by vendors.
Apple and Samsung have been sharing the worldwide lead for over a decade, while current regional leader Xiaomi secured their third position globally just a couple of years ago.
Striking Android Dominance among South Asian Real Money Gaming Communities
The shifted market share patterns of the world’s top smartphone brands in South Asia observed by the Casino Days research paper reveal a striking dominance of Android devices at the expense of iOS-powered phones.
On the global level, Android enjoys a comfortable lead with a sizable 68.79% share which grows to nearly 79% when we look at the whole continent of Asia. The data on South Asian real money gaming communities suggests that Android’s dominance grows even higher and is north of the 90% mark.
Among the major factors behind these figures, the authors of the study point to the relative affordability of and greater availability of Android devices in the region, especially when manufactured locally in countries like India and Vietnam.
“And, with influencers and tech reviews putting emphasis on Android devices, the choice of mobile phone brand and OS becomes easy; Android has a much wider range of products and caters to the Asian online casino market in ways that Apple can’t due to technical limitations,” the researchers add.
The far better integration achieved by Google Pay compared to its counterpart Apple Pay has also played a crucial role in shaping the existing smartphone market trends.
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