New Delhi: The exponential growth of smartphone users in India will help the mobile applications market to expand in the country, enterprise mobility solutions firm Xcube Labs said.
“As per current estimates, we’re expected to have close to 400 million smartphones in use in India by 2016. This will eventually lead to development of a more robust mobile app market in the country,” Xcube Labs CEO Bharath Lingam said.
India did not start out being the country with one of the largest base of mobile users; however, it surpassed most of the first world countries in a short span of time once carrier prices as well as the handset prices dropped, he added.
“We see a similar opportunity for mobile apps in India. The growth of mobile apps in India is driven by the growth of smartphones, availability of bandwidth and of local content and relevance of global apps to this ecosystem,” Lingam said.
India, which has the world’s second largest mobile phone user base, saw dip in feature phone sales for the first time in the July-September quarter as smartphones continue to capture consumer interest.
According to a report by CyberMedia Research (CMR), mobile handset shipments grew 10.9 per cent to 62.9 million units during July-September 2013. Of the total, 51.8 million units were feature phones, while 11.1 million were smartphones.
On growth of 3G in India, which will help the mobile apps ecosystem, Lingam said: “Once smartphones started getting traction in advanced nations, 3G data consumption really took off and we expect a similar projection in the case of India as well. Industry projections measure that the 3G adoption will be at 250 million by the end of 2016.”
