Ericsson Notices 18 Million Dip In Mobile Subscribers Across India In Q3

Over the past few months, a sizable number of reports have cited the growth in the culture of smartphone and mobile data usage, in India especially. The latest Ericsson Mobility report however has also put up an interesting fact at display here: 18 million mobile subscriptions have been terminated in the third quarter alone in India. This comes at a time when all major InfoTech firms worldwide are eyeing India as the new market, poised for a decade worth of growth prospect.

While the issue of dip in mobile subscriptions may raise a lot of eye brows, quite recently we had also observed a rather strange shift in the market acquisition plans across all cellular operators in India, which saw them ignoring the rather non-performing subscriptions or the passive ones, as they defaulted or digressed to other options via mobile number portability etc. The bright side to this is that these companies have seen good dividend to their 3G investments. Mobile data usage, according to the report has doubled in comparison to the Q3 last year. Not just that, the report has also estimated a 50% compounded annual growth rate for the mobile data subscription till 2018.

Ericsson India’s Regional Head, Fredrik Jejdling has noted that the ‘premise’ of mobile broadband i.e. 3G and mobility across the country have been strong indicators to the good prospects that the report predicts. Ericsson’s Senior Vice President and Head of Strategy, Douglas Gilstrap has again added that the emergence of tablets, efficient and cheaper smartphones has promoted an expectation of better services in mobile plans. This is supported by the fact that smartphones sales spiked this quarter in comparison to last year’s, as about 40% of the mobile sales were composed of smartphones.

Ericsson has also noted in the mobility report that there is more scope for uptake in smartphone market, since currently only 15% users across the world possess smartphones. The cumulative unit volume sold by the year end is expected to cross 1.1 billion, and China has been the greatest buyer with about 35% of this sale. The report states that by 2018, smartphones subscriptions should touch 3.3 billion units. Also, currently APAC demography (Asia Pacific – which includes India) accounts for largest share of data usage, and it is expected that APAC would account for 40% usage by 2018 – saddled upon the increase in interest and initiative among the people to rely on internet in the coming years.

Image Source|  livemint

Looking For A Social Media Agency?? – Contact WATConsult – India’s Leading Social Media Agency

WATBlog is India’s Best Blog Of 2009 and is owned and managed by WATMedia Pvt Ltd a Digital Media Company that aims at being the thought leader in the space by Connecting the Web, Advertising and Technology (WAT) Industry in India.