Can you tell me what is one thing that most young Indians aged between 13 to 26 want today ?
It is IPHONE !
Mobiles or Cell phones are now the de-facto status symbols for younger generation in India. They will do anything to get the latest phone models, however costly they may be.
College Kattas are the places where discussion and reviews and bashings of these latest mobile phones take place. No college goer can escape this !
Increasingly, the school going kids – some as young as 12 year olds have mobile phones with them. SMSing is the now the most popular way to communicate among teens.
Here is what one of the recent world wide Technological survey for young children had to say:
The surveyors found the average Chinese computer user has 37 online friends they have never met, Indian youth are most likely to see cell phones as a status symbol, while one-in-three UK and U.S. teenagers say they cannot live without games consoles.
What is the outcome of all this ?
Indian Telecommunication Industry recorded a whooping record breaking 7 million new mobile subscribers in June month alone.
According to TRAI (Telecom Regulatory Authority of India ), the monthly additions were the highest ever for the country. This is followed by addition of 6.57 million new subscribers in May.
The total number of mobile subscribers in India at the end of June was 185.13 million, compared to 40 million fixed-line subscribers, according to the TRAI, based in Delhi. The country’s overall teledensity, the proportion of the population with access to a mobile or fixed-line phone, crept up to 19.86 percent in June, from 19.26 percent at the end of May.
Predictions for Indian telecom Subscribers
According to a Gartner survey, most of the growth will come from rural areas, where only 2 percent of the population have access to mobile phones. Service providers have already started to focus on rural markets, with aggressive rates and handsets priced at under $25 (Rs. 1000).
Cellular service revenue in India will increase at a compound annual rate of 18.4 percent between this year and 2011, to reach $25.6 billion, Gartner estimated. Cellular revenue last year was $8.9 billion.
Indian cellular operators are fuelling this growth by offering cheap handsets, and aggressively priced offers. They make their money from other debatable ways