India will have 810 million smartphone subscribers by 2021, according to a report by Ericsson Mobility. The report notes that 16pc of people in India had a smartphone at the end of 2015, and is expected to rise to 58pc by 2021. Globally, 44pc of users had a smartphone by the end of 2015, and this is expected to rise to 81pc in the same time period. The growth of smartphone ownership in India is expected to fuel the growth of mobile broadband in the country. It is predicted that total mobile traffic will reach 4.5 Exabytes (EB) per month in India by 2021. Further, it was noted that the country saw the addition of 21 million mobile subscriptions in Q1 2016.
Ericsson’s report also says that WhatsApp Messenger is the top mobile app in terms of the number of Indian consumers, followed by Google Search and YouTube. Further, file sharing app Xender was the top mobile app in terms of average monthly data usage, followed by SHAREit and YouTube video sharing app. It was also noted that e-commerce apps such as Flipkart, PayTM and Snapdeal were growing in popularity, in India. The report also said that music streaming and watching videos are the most popular forms of entertainment in India. The percentage of smartphone users streaming online music and watching full-length online videos in the country is higher than the global average.