Smartphone Users in India Consuming 1GB Data a Day on Average: Nielsen

Smartphone users in India are consuming an average 1GB data per day - from an average 4GB a month not long ago - and spending more than 90 minutes on online activities daily across the entry-level, mid-range and premium segments, a Nielsen India report said on Thursday. Additionally, the report said the average selling price of mobile phones is rising too thanks to growing demand for affordable smartphones.

India has emerged among the most preferred smartphone markets in the world owing to affordable handset prices and low-cost data penetration, triggering a huge replacement demand among the customers across segments, the Nielsen Smartphone 2018 report added.

"The advent of high-speed 4G Internet, less-expensive mobile handsets and a correction in call data charges have encouraged the speedy adoption of smartphones in India," said Abhijit Matkar, Director-Technology IPG - Nielsen India.

To meet the demand of the mass market, new Chinese and Indian handset makers have launched affordable handsets which are under Rs. 5,000.

"This sudden influx of affordable smartphones created a whole segment of new consumers who either upgraded from feature phones or were new mobile users altogether," Matkar said in a statement.

When it comes to app usage, chat and VoIP apps dominate usage across customer segment followed by browser apps.

Interestingly, uTorrent Beta app dominates across categories when it comes of consumption of data, followed by YouTube across customer segments, the findings showed.

The smartphone users spend more than 90 minutes a day on online activities while the premium segment takes the usage up to 130 minutes per day.

"The price of handsets and data is emerging as a remarkable surrogate for monitoring the ever-widening set of users and their smartphone usage, thereby facilitating business and marketing strategy for better return on investment (ROI)", Matkar added.

Despite the availability of economically-priced smartphones, average smartphone prices are still increasing.

"In fact, the average cost has steadily risen from about Rs. 7,700 in 2015 to about Rs. 10,000 in 2017," said the report.

The appetite for data consumption has risen over the last 15 to 18 months. The highest engagement occurs on apps that consume a lot of data like Facebook, WhatsApp Messenger, Instagram, and Google Chrome, the report added.