The market dominance of mobile first platforms in India has been growing for a long time now, with cheaper data plans and massive increase in the sale of smartphones. And due to the Covid 19 pandemic situation, this industry has seen growth like never before. There has been a lasting implication of the pandemic on the mobile economy and some key developments that have changed the consumer experiences post pandemic.
In this article we will analyse the growing mobile first market in detail and trace out the emerging trends that will dominate the market in the new normal.
Let us first go through some stats to understand the scale of growth:
- 222 Million new internet users in a year since October 2020
- 600,000 average new internet users per day
- 11.5% YoY growth in India’s internet user base
- India has reached 17% of world internet users
- India’s total internet user base is 726 Million as of Q2 2020
- India’s total internet user base is 810 Million as of Q2 2021
Going through these stats gives us a pretty good idea of how big this industry is in India and at what rate it is growing. India continued to be the largest market after China by combined App Store and Google Play installs, surpassing 7 billion downloads in a quarter for the fourth time. India’s downloads reached another peak in Q2 2021 with a 9 per cent Q/Q increase. India is far ahead in numbers from the countries that are immediately after India in the global apps download ranking.
And the impact of pandemic can be easily figured out from the following statement. In Q3 2021, Indians collectively spent 20% more time in-app than in Q1 2020 5 as COVID-19 kept people indoors. In India, the average daily hours spent per device grew by 37% between 2019 and Q3 of 2021.
Also the usage pattern of the internet by Indian consumers was found to be very interesting. 90% of the active internet users access the internet everyday. And among them a majority of approximately 96 percent use it for entertainment related activities followed by communication and social media.
Moreover when it comes to average data consumption, India ranks the second highest in the world at 14.6 GB per month, which is 60% higher than the global average of 9 GB per month. This has grown over 20% since 2019 when the consumption was 12 GB per month on average. And the numbers suggest that the average consumption of India is expected to reach 40GB per month by 2026, whereas the global average is expected to be 35 GB by then.
All these numbers combined strongly indicate that not only is the mobile first market in India rapidly growing but also some new emerging trends can be witnessed in recent times. More over nowadays, the Indian consumers are quickly adapting to the global trends and apps across categories are being actively downloaded.
This is supplemented by the large number of apps that are now available to consumers in every segment. But this also means it is very essential to grab the attention of the consumers to stay ahead in the competition.
Mobile marketing has reached a very mature stage now globally. And the same fact stands for India too. There have been many innovations in the field of user acquisition and these have greatly helped the apps to enhance their popularity among the huge consumer base.
But more often than not, it is the lack of expertise in mobile marketing that makes some apps stay behind in the competition. All the technologies of mobile marketing are now available for anyone who is willing to afford the service but expertise and experience is also equally important to explore these technologies to their full capacity.