This piece of news does not come in as a surprise, absolutely not. Mobile Internet penetration in India is at an all time high, capturing a lot many audiences.
Ipsos, a leading market research firm conducted this survey in which not to our surprise, they found out that Indian college students are spending up to eight hours daily browsing Internet on their mobile phones. The developers of UC mobile browser, UCWeb had commissioned the survey.
The survey also stated that working professionals are spending almost five to eight hours daily on the mobile Internet, using Wi-Fi on the weekends and 3G/2G on weekdays.
However, many workplaces also have good wi-fi setups, but many employers don’t give out passwords considering the amount of time employees spend in leisure activities and social networking over the Internet in office hours.
School children who are provided with mobiles now are not much behind in the race. Parental controls might have probably played a part in them using internet on mobile phones for almost three to four hours daily during weekdays.
The number rises on weekends and holidays. In Tier 1 towns; for a majority, mobile is the only screen to the Internet accessed only through data plans and hence the sensitivity to speed & data utilization is relatively higher.
The speed and brand of the mobile Internet companies play a key role in influencing the usage factors. Moreover, one can quickly grab the mobile, which is the handiest of all gadgets to make a quick search on any doubt or query.
Scrolling on to Facebook, or chatting on Whatsapp, the mobile Internet era has buried the SMS service in the backyard. The survey highlights the fact that video calling and online shopping remain the least preferred activities via a mobile browser. Flipkart should now get the hint and not take a step ahead in going app only!
According to the research, a simple layout, one-time download, and basic design are factors favoring a mobile browser over apps. The sample included people using internet on their phones for activities beyond chatting messaging among Sec A2/B (30:70), 15-30 years.
UCWeb Has 50% Indian Mobile Browser Market
When it comes to Mobile browser usage, UCWeb remains to be most popular by a distance. According to analytics company StatCounter, UCWeb has more than 2X market share compared to nearest rival. In Sept 2015, it crossed 50 percent market share and currently stands shade below 54 percent.
Opera is a distant second with a market share of around 20 percent. Interestingly, Google’s own Chrome browser comes in 3rd and has just below 15 percent market share.
One of the reasons why UCWeb is so popular because it is light-weight and fast. Not only that recently they launched a data saving feature, which helps users save expensive mobile data.
