NEW DELHI, July 28 (Bernama) -– Smart devices are fast overtaking
conventional media in India with 20 million of the estimated 48 million mobile
Internet users having shifted 50 per cent of their newspaper and television time
to their mobile screens.
They browse for entertainment, all categories of news, travel and sports
content, a survey on Mobile Internet behaviour and usage study conducted by
ViziSense, India’s leading online audience and ad measurement platform,
revealed.
Of all mobile Internet users in India, 87 per cent are online on mobile
every day and 70 per cent of the daily mobile Internet users fall in the age
group of 24-34 years.
“Almost half of these users go online through their cellphones every 2-3
hours and the duration of these visits is more than an hour. Almost 60 per cent
of these users have been on this medium for over a year already,” said ViziSense
in a statement.
Email and social media are the primary drivers of mobile Internet, said the
study, which combined an online survey conducted with ViziSense India online
panellists (Internet users with mobile phones) and recorded responses from 2,024
users who accessed the Internet through their cellphones.
However, consumption of content is starting to shift in favour of the two
new screens -– Mobiles and Tablets -- and the categories which see frequent or
daily consumption include News, Games and Entertainment, Travel, Education and
Search, it said.
These users are also easing into mobile e-commerce with almost 80 per cent
having performed some form of financial transaction through their mobile phone
-– payment of utility bills, purchase of products and services -- and 28 per
cent of mobile internet users have even used ‘mobile money’.
The penetration of tablets, and rising demand for them, is keeping the IT
and media industries excited.
The survey also revealed that 14 per cent of these users already possessed a
tablet while another 60 per cent planned to buy a tablet soon.
The survey establishes two major trends: the shift in screens is for real,
and English print is migrating to mobile phones through Wireless Application
Protocol (WAP) sites and applications, especially around lifestyle, travel and
sports content.
The survey also tracked the usage by the 18 per cent women subset within
this group of Mobile Internet users, and found that women outscore men when it
comes to accessing books or education, entertainment and travel-related content
through their cellphones.
India has the world’s second largest mobile phone user base with over 929.37
million users as of May 2012. It has the world’s third-largest Internet
user-base with over 121 million as of December 2011.
-- BERNAMA
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