Bharti Airtel, India’s largest telecom player, has released the results of Airtel Mobitude2013 – the 5th edition of the first-of-its-kind Indian annual survey that captures the mobile attitude of customers highlighting their preferences and consumption patterns.
Important points to note are the increase in usage of Mobile TV and despite Android devices ruling India, data traffic is driven by iOS and Windows users on the Airtel network.
As the number of smartphone users have been increasing, so are the number of users who are consuming data – Airtel reported a 124% jump in data users and as a result, the data consumption grew by a record 220%.
And it goes without saying that nearly 90% of the data traffic was driven by 3G enabled devices. Mobile with bigger screens (5.5” plus) jumped 123% in the previous two quarters while those upto 3.5” grew less than 30%. In terms of the websites visited, Google reigned supreme, closely followed by YouTube and Facebook.
Do you remember that while other handset makers (read: Reliance) were offering bundled schemes to sell Apple phones, Airtel repeatedly underlined its USP – the network built for video streaming. Seems this has paid off as Mobile TV grew a mind-boggling 400% over 2012 and considering 2012 itself grew 65% over 2011, the growth is noteworthy. The top seen channel genres were entertainment, news and sports.
Airtel is synonymous with music. Its ‘Hello Tunes’/Caller Ring Back Tone reported 120 million downloads and Airtel Radio and Karaoke were its most popular services. As expected, love songs were the most popular with Tum Hi Ho from Aashiqui 2 and Saans from Jab Tak Hain Jaan topping Bollywood Hello Tune downloads.
In Airtel Talkies (Audio), Bol Bacchan led with Bollywood epic hit Sholay and Amar Akbar Anthony still continuing to be favorites among customers
In the Gaming domain, adrenaline rushing games like BMW Racing, Asphalt4 and The Dark Knight Rises ruled space as the racing genre ruled the domain. Surprisingly, mythology inspired kids gaming was more than 130% than cricket!
Ek rupaiyaah me ab sab kuch milega – In the Re 1 entertainment store, it seemed to be hit in rural India with music, image and game trending but Airtel did not share any numbers to back it.
We love the forbidden fruit! Sunny Leone witnessed a whooping 300% more downloads than even King Khan, in both male and female celebrities category.
Sherlyn Chopra, Poonam Pandey, Megan Fox, Brea Lynn replaced Deepika Padukone, Kareena Kapoor and Angelina Jolie who were earlier in the list. Again, very clear that Skin rules over everything!
Ranbir Kapoor and Ranveer Singh replaced Shah Rukh Khan and Salman Khan, who lost out for the first time in 5 years! The youth seem to prefer younger actors now!
In the world of Sports, Sachin Tendulkar ruled charts with a whopping 124% jump in download compared to last year, mainly because of his retirement year, followed by Roger Federer. Dhoni & Yuvraj were replaced in the Top 5 league by with Serena Williams, Sania Mirza and Saina Nehwal.
What is missing compared to last year? MMS has totally disappeared. Perhaps it is due to meteoric rise of WhatsApp. The usage pattern w.r.t. timing has not been shared this year – it was 10 PM to 11 PM previously.
Airtel’s App Store figures which boasted of 3 million downloads every month last year has again disappeared!
The findings of Airtel Mobitude 2013 are quite similar to that Google Zeitgeist 2013 report which was released yesterday!