We have already seen how various smartphone and Internet companies are interested in Indian market. Main reason is because we are a big market in terms of population. Number of Internet users in India is also expected to touch 402 million by the end of this year. If India achieves this number, it will be 2nd highest in the world.
India’s Internet user base has been seeing growth of 49% over last year. If we go in past to recall India’s internet growth, it took us more than a decade to move from 10 million to 100 million Internet users and 3 years from 100 to 200 million. But India reaches from 300 to 400 million users in just 1 year. As of October 2015, India had 375 million users on Internet. This number makes India third largest market but soon it will beat US to become 2nd largest market.China is currently leading the list with more than 600 million internet users.
If we break down the report, 71% male and 29% female are Internet users in India. Internet usage among males has been growing at a rate of 50% while it is growing at 46% for female users. Among the female Internet users, the highest growth has been recorded among the Non-Working women. In urban India, the ratio of men and women Internet users is 62:38. Internet users among females are growing at a rate of 39% compared to 28% among males. It is a good sign that women at home are taking interest on Internet.
There has been a good growth in Internet usage in Urban India. Total number of mobile internet users have surpassed 80 million by October 2015. It was around at 99% growth over last year. It is impressive. 69% of Internet users in India access Internet on daily basis and this is also up by 60% from last year. Rural India is also growing on Internet. Rural India is expected to touch 87 million Internet users by December 2015 and 109 million by June 2016.
Survey also tried to talk with people who do not access internet. Around 1.4 million confirmed that they are willing to access the internet in the next one year. From these 1.4 million, over two-thirds intending to connect to Internet by using mobile phones.
Internet users are growing but India’s Internet is still struggling to touch the good level. Most of the parts of the countries are seeing very poor connectivity. Rural India is far behind in this and users are still getting EDGE connectivity. Most of the telecom operators are not providing proper Internet speed on 3G too. We already wrote how Indian ISPs are biggest roadblock of Digital India. I hope India’s current BJP government will try to improve it to boost its Digital India initiative.
“The IAMAI-IMRB survey was conducted across 35 cities with more than one million population to prepare this report. It includes eight large metros and other smaller cities, including Coimbatore, Jaipur, Lucknow, Ludhiana and Visakhapatnam.”
