Mary Meeker, a former analyst from Morgan Stanley and current Kleiner Perkins investor spoke at the recent CODE conference about the growing trends of Internet usage in the world. The most interesting arguments that we found in her talk was about India’s position in the web-age.
India is known to have less than 10 percent high level users and usage trends as compared to the world where we join the ranks of other third-world countries Indonesia and Nigeria. The argument does sound legitimate considering the fact that Internet availability across India in particular differs massively. A large portion of the land is considered as part of rural India and lacks Internet services. So, yes the chances of everyone in this country to be Internet friendly will take some time but there is light at the end of the tunnel.
However, when it comes to smartphone subscribers in the world, India has managed to make a strong impact. Indian markets are flooded with numerous smartphones that are priced according to users financial backgrounds. The Internet usage for most smartphone users is moving away from its humble beginning on the desktop to being mobile.
According to the speakers slide, the market is moving towards under-penetrated markets like China, India, Brazil and Indonesia. This possibly could lead to major enterprises like Apple and Google looking to launch their smartphones in developing nations first, in an attempt to gain traction. The market trends for all smartphones will be generated in the current developing nations. This will lead to tech reviewers in third world nations deciding whether the latest Apple launch is worth their effort.
On the other hand, tablets are struggling to make a mark in Indian markets. It was recently reported that the tablet market here recorded a decline of over 32 percent as it still struggles to attract buyers. Selling tablets in India has become quite a task as the markets are flooded with high-end smartphones which probably have better features and are obviously feasible to carry around. According to Mary Meeker, tablets had an initial introductory growth of over 52 percent but then as the trend of owning tablets declined, sales dipped in many countries around the world.
As for data traffic, thanks to the availability of cheap Android powered smartphones, India has become quite a large contributor with regards to 2G and 3G penetration. India expects 811 million 2G subscriptions, which is still widely used and 171 million 3G subscriptions in 2014. The gross total number of people who will be online is expected to cross 982 million. This growing trend does not account for the possible invasion of the 4G service which a number of network providers are waiting to launch. According to Mary Meeker, mobile data traffic is growing at the rate of 81 percent and is mainly because video streaming which has become the biggest trend among the masses.
Towards the end of her presentation, she has categorized India as being one of the developing ‘Big’ smartphone markets with the likes China, Brazil, Indonesia and Russia running close. According to the slide, India recorded 117 million smartphone users in 2013 with a growth rate of 55 percent and population penetration of 10 percent out of the 1.2 billion people in the country. Her chart does show a 10 percent decline in the year 2014, which we believe would be salvaged by the entry of numerous low-budget Android smartphones in the Indian markets.
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