Indians are waiting breathlessly for 3G services to start. So are the telecom operators. And they have a reason to: they have paid Rs 67,000 crores to move content on smartphones.
The problem is how many smartphones are there in India. So far, there were little to no estimates. Now Cisco has come out with an authoritative world-wide study titled “Cisco Visual Networking Index: Global Mobile Data Traffic Forecast Update, 2009-2014.”
The Cisco study includes India and gives an estimate of the number of smartphones in India.
But the figures are not flattering. In 2009, only 4% of Indians had smartphones; in 2010 this percentage is expected to go up a notch to 5%. By 2014, the forecast is 12%.
In other words only four out of 100 mobile phone owners in India today own a smartphone. In 2010, this number will grow to 12 out of every 100 mobile phone owners in India.
This may not be a small number when one looks at actual numbers. For instance, 4% of 500 million mobile phones translates into 20 million.
The question is: Is it enough for telecom operators to roll out high-end services? Or should India focus on mid-range or even low-end phones when planning for future mobile services.
Click here to read the full report.
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