India goes Mobile

In the last 20 years, the use of mobile devices has grown rapidly across India, but
different states have had varying rates of adoption. With more than 990 million
mobile phone subscribers, and hundreds more added daily, India is easily one of
the largest and fastest growing mobile markets in the world.
With the meteoric rise of mobile technology, we see a significant change in
consumer behaviour across India. Mobile has impacted consumers life so much
that they use it for searching minute details to smart shopping online.
Here is the infographic designed to help business owners and marketers to know
the consumer across India. The insights are drawn using the sample taken from
Airtel and the statistics shared by COAI and TRAI.
Rise of Mobile
According to source: TRAI, there are over 990 million subscriber base with
monthly growth rate of 0.56 percent. The data show that UP West has the
highest subscriber base at 67 million but Maharashtra adds most subscribers in a
month. The mobile subscription in urban areas has reached to 570.33 million at
the end of Aug 2015, whereas in rural areas it is 418.36 million for the same
period. The wireless teledensity has increased to 78.37 with the segregation of
urban accounting to 145.67 and rural to 48.09. Particularly Punjab, Himachal
Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Delhi states have a teledensity greater than 100.
Analysing telecom Operator wise dispersion, Bharti Airtel exclusively
accommodates maximum market share of subscribers accounting for 23.56
percent followed by Vodafone with 18.87 percent and Idea at 16.58 percent.
India is distributed in different circles and metros. Circle A comprises of Andhra
Pradesh, Karnataka, Gujarat, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu. Circle B includes
Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Punjab, UP East and West, West Bengal and
Haryana. Circle C incorporates Himachal Pradesh, Bihar, Orissa, Jammu and
Kashmir, North East and Assam and last, metros include Delhi, Chennai, Kolkata
and Mumbai. The statistics states that Circle B has the highest mobile subscriber
base with 39 percent base whereas Metro, Circle A and C have 11, 35 and 15
percent respectively.
There is a huge variation in the rural urban subscription base with 36 percent
belongs to rural India. Out of this, 23 percent of rural subscribers use mobile
internet, as compared to 27 percent of urban base.
The number of internet users using mobile phones is on the rise and given the
huge subscriber base only 24 percent are data users. Out of which, 67 percent
are active on 2G and 33 percent use 3G. Andhra Pradesh has the maximum 2G
users whereas Himachal Pradesh has the lowest 2G base. For 3G, majority lies in
Karnataka whereas Orissa has the minimum base.
Looking at the spending spree, 3 out 4 users spend more than Rs 750 on mobile
services. Major handsets used are Nokia, Samsung, Micromax, Karbonn, Spice

and Lava. There has been advance in technology and downfall in the prices but
still 74 percent are still hooked to feature phones and only 20 percent use
smartphone.
With the coming of smart messaging apps, we observe a drop in the traditional
way of sending messages. The statistics suggest that 85 percent of the
subscribers have not sent out SMS in the past one month and of those, 89
percent are on feature phones and 25 percent use mobile data.
We observe that 3 out of 10 users are elite whose mobile bill exceeds Rs 1000
every month belongs to Karnataka, Delhi and Andhra Pradesh.
Observing the language usage pattern across India, 254 million speak Hindi
particularly in the states of Himachal Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh,
Rajasthan, Haryana, Bihar and Delhi. This is followed by 85million verbalizing in
Marathi in Maharashtra and Mumbai, 65million in Tamil in the states Tamil Nadu
and Chennai, 57million in Telegu in Andhra Pradesh, 53 million in Bengali in West
Bengal and Kolkata and 48 in Gujarati in Gujarat.