We all have witnessed a smartphone revolution in India with majority of the people shifting to smartphones from feature phones. Even an ordinary cab driver or a domestic help have access to smartphone and smart devices in their lives.
This comes as no surprise that India has left other countries behind in generating maximum mobile-advertising revenue and handling heavy traffic. India already has about 167 Million smartphone users as of today and the market it expected to double by 2019.
According to the report Q3 State of Mobile Advertising study released by Opera Mediaworks and the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA), 75% of the population in India uses smartphones and the rest still use the feature phones. Of course, one can’t discount the reliability of a feature phone, but then there is a reason they are not called ‘smart’. According to the same report, other developing countries like Vietnam, Indonesia and Philippines are also seeing quicker shift from feature phones to smartphones.
Findings of the study
The study has been conducted for six countries in APAC region and India has gained the top spot in mobile-advertising generated revenues and traffic. in overall APAC, 67.1% of the phones use Android OS and the rest are either other major operating systems or feature phones. Surprisingly in India, the revenue generated from feature phone is still very high and nearly double that of its market share.
Vikas Gulati, MD, Asia, Opera Mediaworks, commented on the scenario in India, “Video ad on smartphones is what is truly powering the monetization potential of the region. These ad types are effective at attracting, engaging and ultimately converting mobile consumers. India leads in overall traffic and the top three categories for ad impressions are Mobile stores and career portals, social networking sites and apps, and sports.”
India is leading the pack of six countries with more than half of the share at 53%. However, the amount of revenue is not as high as expected considering the volume of feature-phone users in India and the monetization models currently employed.
Free Basic by Facebook is another platform available to people in India for using basic services without any cost. Anything extra will be charged directly to the customers. While it promotes basic amenities to the users, it also increases the importance of smartphones these days.
In India, one can understand the reason for high ad-revenues and traffic. Most of it comes from e-commerce shopping and social networking sites. E-tailers like Flipkart, Snapdeal, Amazon, Infibeam continue to have mobile website for the users and generate more moolah through ads.
One cannot forget Facebook and Twitter are also used in high volumes in India. In fact, social media is like a small country in India. You will see India everywhere, and that too the angry and confused part of it because it is easier to speak out and rage on internet than do it out in the open.
With the advent of 4G in India, we can expect more people shifting to the LTE technology and doing away with their feature phones. As the traffic increases on leading sites, the revenues will shoot up proportionally. India should continue to remain on the top spot if the growth happens at the same rate.
