Asia – Pacific region will have over 1 billion Smartphone users by end of 2015 (1023.9 mln to be precise) according to a report published by Marketing intelligence company eMarketer. China and India account for about 70 percent of these 1 billion users, while China alone accounts for over half of these Smartphone users.
However, the Chinese Smartphone adoption rates are showing signs of slowdown, while India has emerged as the largest potential growth market for adoption of the devices.
The report estimates that 40.8% of the mobile population in Asia-Pacific will have such a smartphone in 2015, and this percentage will grown to 51.5 percent or nearly 1.5 billion by year 2019. The growth in smartphone devices is driven by launch of low-cost smartphones coupled with drop in cost of service plans in few Asia-Pacific markets.
Indian Smartphone Adoption
Among all Asia-Pacific countries, Smartphone adoption is expected to be highest in India in next four years. India will have over 317 million smartphone users by 2019, nearly double the number of 167 million smartphone users it has today. By end of 2016, India would have crossed 200 million Smartphone user mark.
Here is how Asia-Pacific Smartphone Market will grow over next 4 years.
As far as penetration of Smartphone market goes, India still ranks lower than most countries in Asia-Pacific. In 2015, only about 1 in 4 Indians had smartphones (approx 26.3%). In comparison, countries like Singapore, South Korea and Hong Kong have over 8 in 10 users having smartphones. Even in China, more than half of all mobile users have smartphones.
Here is a chart that shows Smartphone penetration of various Asia-Pacific countries.
Internet Access in Asia-Pacific Countries
According to eMarketer – internet access growth in Asia-Pacific is expected to be 8.2% in 2015 and then remain around 7% for the rest of forecast period, through 2019. The growth in internet access will be driven primarily due to adoption of Smartphones in emerging markets like India, Indonesia and others.
China has already crossed 1 billion mobile phone users, while India is expected to cross that number in next 6 months or lesser. According to TRAI report for June 2015, India had a total of 980.81 million mobile phone users out of which 89.93 percent are active users.
You can check out eMarketer report here.
