The average time spent on smartphones daily is now equivalent to the time spent by TV consumers in an entire week demonstrating that the engagement levels provided by smartphones are unparalleled.
The latest Smartphones Usage and Behaviour report from Kantar IMRB & MMA shows that mobile internet usage jumped by 29% in the period Oct-Dec 2016 over the previous quarter.
Key insights from the study
The strong gains were driven by a number of industry factors like the launch of 4G services prompting a string of low-priced data offers and the impact of demonetization.
Here’s a look at the key insights on the Smartphone usage & how it is reflected in the consumer behaviour.
- Smartphone data usage up 29%-The launch of 4G services prompted a string of low-priced data offers from incumbent players as they fought migration of consumers away from their networks. The availability of free/low priced mobile data offers led to a sharp increase in data usage during the quarter.
- Impact of Demonetisation : The reach of finance properties grew by whopping 86% compared to the previous quarter.
Most Engaged Categories.
- Search, Social, Messaging as a category was the topmost engaged. The average time spent on Search, Social and Messaging platforms grew by more than 50% no doubt helped by the lower cost of data and the addition of new data subscribers (~28 million)
- While Women spent nearly 1.3x more time on online shopping portals as compared to Men; it was Entertainment that toppled Shopping to become the second-most engaged category in this quarter. Users transitioned from offline/downloaded content to online video streaming as demonstrated by 2 of the Top 5 apps being video streaming services.
- News and Media pipped Gaming to grab a position in the Top-5 list. News aggregators displayed a unique ability to attract audiences from different socio-economic backgrounds
Mobile is clearly the third largest mass medium in terms of Ad spends in India today, with estimated spends in 2016 amounting to Rs. 4,200 Cr increasing to an estimated spends of Rs. 6643 Cr in 2017.
