Television breakfast shows, beware!
Indians begin their day with videos on their phones, a report by mobile advertising firm InMobi shows. Between 6:30am and 9:30am is their preferred time for this activity.
Mobile-video viewing is highest during weekends, the report said.
In recent years, mobile-video consumption has increased dramatically in India—in 2017, it more than doubled from the previous year—thanks to the availability of inexpensive smartphones and affordable data plans. The trend, says InMobi, is likely to continue.
Indians spend an average of around 4.5 hours a day accessing the internet on their smartphones, about 37% more than the time they spend watching TV, said the report, which is based on research by InMobi, eMarketer, comScore, and MMA Research.
In December 2017, the CEO of the Indian government think-tank NITI Aayog, Amitabh Kant, had said that India had become the world’s No.1 mobile data-consuming country, beating the US and China put together.
By 2021, InMobi estimates, videos will make for three-fourths of India’s mobile data traffic.
What Indians do on their phones
Indians, in general, spend considerably more time browsing the internet on their smartphones than making calls or texting, the report said. The trend prevails across metros (with a population of over 4 million), mini metros (1-4 million), and tier-2 cities.
Smartphone users are also hooked on to apps. In 2017, the country stood third in a ranking of app downloads, with a 12% share of the world’s total app downloads, the report said.
As data costs and smartphone prices continue to fall, mobile traffic is only set to grow in the country. Swedish telecom company Ericsson said in a November 2017 report (pdf) that data consumption would hit 18GB per month per smartphone by 2023, up from 3.9GB in 2017. That would mean a 360% increase in just six years.