According to the market study released by Gartner Inc., India’s mobile phone connections will report a five percent surge to 880 million in 2015. In 2014, there were 837 million connections. Naturally, the country will see an increase on mobile service spending too, estimated to four percent growth and will reach $21.4 billion.
The reason for the estimated mobile service spending is the growing use of data services among people, which the study estimates to grow 15 percent to reach $6.5 billion. Availability of more affordable smartphones, growing coverage, new networks etc. are the obvious reasons pointed out for data growth.
“In India, the rise in spending on data-only connections will be driven by two user scenarios – first, to complement their fixed broadband connectivity, so they can use their larger-screen data-centric devices on the go. In other use cases, data-only connections will be the way for consumers to access broadband connectivity because of a lack of fixed networks,” said Neha Gupta, senior research analyst at Gartner.
A huge revenue opportunity is also estimated from this data growth in the country. As a que to the service providers, the study hints the need for new pricing, shared plans, a refine of the existing services and inclusion of personalized options for plans. The study points at the mobile applications, especially the mobile video apps for the increase on data spending.
This creates a huge market for mobile applications, which now needs to be more focused on marketing and transparency of apps, says the study. The study also finds that there is no economical differentiation between the people using mobile applications. Hence, the app developers need to concentrate more on enhancing the user experience of the applications and only those that satisfy the customer will win, warns the study.
