India will have 730 million internet users by

2020 and is already in a 'Post-PC' era

BY MANISH SINGHAUG 19, 2016

Steve Jobs probably didn't have India in mind when in 2010 he made his ambitious claim about
the arrival of post-PC era. Though Jobs was hoping the iPad — or the tablet category, in general
— would replace bulky desktops and laptops, the world's second most populous nation has
embraced the post-PC era with cheap Android smartphones.

SEE ALSO: 1.5 million people access the Internet via Google's free Wi-Fi at 19 Indian
railway stations

India’s 1.3 billion people never really had their PC revolution moment. Instead, the smartphone
is increasingly becoming the country’s primary choice of computing platform, leapfrogging the
PC age entirely. Whether it’s how people in India connect to the internet or shop or socialize, it’s
already become clear that the country is living in the post-PC era.

400 million new smartphone users to join soon

The world’s fastest growing smartphone market by several estimates, India hit 350 million
smartphone users in the country late last year. According to several projections, the country is
about to see hundreds of millions of new smartphone users in the next four years. A
recent Nasscom and Akamai report claims India will have over 730 million internet users and
702 million smartphone users by 2020.

Counterpoint Research, a market research firm, predicts India will have a billion smartphone
users in the next five years. According to the firm, India currently has over 700 million mobile
phones, out of which 250 million are smartphones.

Indians are mostly using their phones to shop, socialize

Out of the 142 million users in India who access Facebook every month, at least 133 million of
them were accessing the site from their phones. WhatsApp, which is also owned by Facebook,
has over 100 million users who use the service every month. Indians are showing similar interest
in other services.

India’s largest online retailer Flipkart reached 75 million registered users earlier this year.
Though the company hasn’t shared the desktop-mobile breakup of its users, its Android app on
Google Play has been downloaded more than 50 million times, suggesting that a huge chunk of
its users are on mobile. Paytm’s mobile wallet app similarly has over 100 million users.

With smartphones quickly becoming ubiquitous in the country, we are expected to see further
shift in the way we use these services. The Nasscom-Akamai report released this week notes that
as much as 70 percent of all online retail and half of the travel bookings will be done on mobile
devices in the next four years.

More Indians access the Internet on their mobile phones than PCs
Perhaps one of the biggest indicators that India is living in the post-PC era is how people in the
country consume the internet. As of April 2016, India had 17.05 million subscribers of wired
broadband connections, giving us a backhand estimate of how many PCs are being used in the
country. In contrast, there were 133.49 million mobile devices — phones and dongles —
connected to the internet, according to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India.

A study by Statista had a similar finding, which says that there are 375 million internet users in
the country of which 303 million are active mobile internet users. “With only a third of the
population connected to Internet, India is potentially one of the largest countries where majority
of the users are using mobile phones as primary devices to connect to the internet for the first
time,” says Tarun Pathak of Counterpoint Research.

Indians really love accessing the internet on their phones

Google's free Wi-fi at railway stations in India is already attracting over 1.5 million people.
Though the free internet service is only available in 19 cities so far, Google said recently that
people were using 15 times more data than they typically do on their typical 3G data plans.
Telecom gear maker Ericsson estimates that mobile data usage per person in India will grow five
times from 1.4GB last year to 7GB by 2021.