Average Indian Smartphone User Spends 4x Time on Online Activities as Compared to Offline Activities: Nielsen India

Nielsen India today unveiled its featured insight titled “what smartphones say about customers” – exploring the relationship between the price band, consumer profile and usage differences among smartphone users in India. The insight is based on analysis of the On-Device Measurement (ODM) data by dividing smartphones (excluding super premium models), into three major price categories. The categories are Entry Level Handsets (priced

India has emerged among the most preferred smartphone markets in the world owing to affordable handset prices and low cost data penetration – triggering a huge replacement demand among the young and aspiring customers across segments. Despite the availability of economically priced smartphones, average smartphone prices are still increasing. The user habits of Indian smartphone users highlight that users across the segments (entry level, mid and premium) spend more than 90 minutes a day on online activities while the premium segment takes the usage up to 130 minutes per day. When it comes to app usage in terms of category, chat and VoIP apps dominate usage across customer segment followed by browser apps. Interestingly, uTorrent Beta app dominates across categories when it comes of consumption of data; followed by YouTube across customer segments.

Commenting on the report, Abhijit Matkar, Director -Technology IPG - Nielsen India, said, “The advent of high-speed 4G internet, less-expensive mobile handsets and a correction in call data charges have encouraged the speedy adoption of smartphones. To meet the demand of the mass market, new Chinese and Indian handset makers have launched affordable handsets, which are under INR 5,000. This sudden influx of affordable smartphones created a

whole segment of new consumers who either upgraded from feature phones or were new mobile users altogether.”

“The price of handsets and data is emerging as a remarkable surrogate for monitoring the ever- widening set of users and their smartphone usage, thereby facilitating business and marketing strategy for better return on investment (ROI)”, added Abhijit

The featured insight also attempts to define the way forward, with new categories of users, like school-going children, elders and housewives, are entering the segment. The report identifies, more purchasers are emerging from tier 3, 4 and 5 towns, as well as rural areas. So whole new markets are emerging with different sets of needs and expectations. The strategies to cater to this new demand also need to change.