India, the second largest smartphone market, is expected to see a huge growth in the number of smartphones to over 650 million in the next four years, according to a recent report.
US-based firm's Visual Networking Index (VNI) global mobile data traffic forecast for 2014 to 2019 says, that the number of smartphones shipped in India grew 54 per cent during 2014, and the number is expected to grow 4.7-times between 2014 and 2019, reaching 651 million units.
India which is the second biggest internet market, saw an increase of 1.7 times in the number of tablets shipped in 2014 even while the global tablet market saw a decline of 12 pc in Q4, 2014. The number of tablets shipped is further expected to increase 9.2-times by 2019, reaching 18.7 million units.
Speaking about the VNI report, Cisco Managing Director Service Provider Sales (India & SAARC) Sanjay Kaul stated that the report gives an insight into the growth of mobile data in India as a result of increasing adoption of smart mobile devices and machine-to-machine (M2M) connections.
He stated, "Apart from smart connections driven by the IoE (Internet of Everything), the trend of low-cost smartphones will also bring critical mass to the sector and further drive user growth and data traffic in India. We will see a tremendous increase in mobile video in India, which along with increasing speeds and faster wireless networks will fuel the creation of the data business over the next few years."
The report predicts that by 2019 there will be 5.2 billion mobile users globally. In 2014, nearly 59 per cent of the world's population (7.2 billion people) was comprised of mobile users, the number is expected to grow to 69 per cent (7.6 billion people) by 2019.
Source: Huffington Post