With the growth of Smartphones in India, these numbers are not that surprising – Indians spend at an average of 3 hours and 11 minutes on Smartphones per day as compared to 2 hours and 8 minutes in front of their televisions. These are the findings of latest Ericsson ConsumerLab study carried out in April-June 2014 among 4000 smartphone users across 18 urban cities in India.
The growth of big screen smartphones has meant that our content consumption habits have changed and quite drastically at that. Now, there is hardly anytime when a person “Does Not” do anything. Even if a spare minute is available, they reach for their smartphones to view videos, listen to music or update a status on social networks.
The Ericsson study shows that smartphone is now the screen of choice and have now become central to our lives. Here are some numbers to attest that fact:
- App usage has increased 63% over past 2 years
- Users spend 20% more time on smartphones than they did 2 years back
- 25% consumers check their phones over 100 times a day
- Most new users buy smartphones for Social and Chat applications
- At an average a user spends about 3 hours and 11 minutes on their phones everyday
Interestingly, it is just not personal use, but smartphones are now becoming integral part of our businesses. 24% of smartphone owners use mobile apps such as WhatsApp and WeChat for business purposes to sell products and services, expanding their reach to new customers.
Also, not having a wi-fi hotspot does not deter users from not using mobile internet. 8 in 10 smartphone users will continue to access mobile internet using mobile broadband.
Mobile Video Usage
Mobile video consumption is growing exponentially. For one-third of consumers, smartphones are the only screen they use to view online mobile videos. Also, the most popular way for them to consume mobile videos is through messaging and chat apps. One third of users watch videos on mobile shared by their friends.
Also, smartphone consumers prefer to stream videos rather than download and watch them however, nearly 40% of them face problems watching videos due to buffering and stalling.
Mobile Network Connectivity biggest Problem for Indian consumers
According to the report, over half of the surveyed consumers still face issues with mobile coverage and network connectivity when they are indoors and 44% of the time a mobile broadband smartphone user does not have access to the network. Also, only 1/3 of users are able to access internet over mobile broadband every time they attempt!
Consumer expectations too remain quite high when it comes to mobile internet connectivity. Over 58 percent of users expect mobile web pages to load within 3 seconds. However in reality, about 43% of webpages take 10 seconds or more to load.
The issues with connectivity are so severe that 3 out of 4 Indian smartphone users are willing to pay more for a guaranteed better mobile internet experience!
