This statistic shows the smartphone penetration rate in India from 2014 to 2019 as share of mobile phone users. In 2014, 21.2 percent of mobile phone users in India used a smartphone.
India smartphone penetration
The smartphone industry in India is a growing market with almost a third of all Indian mobile users expected to own a smartphone by 2017. The global smartphone penetration forecast shows that almost 50 percent of mobile users worldwide are projected to own a smart device by 2017. In comparison, 49 percent of Chinese mobile users and 80 percent of U.S. mobile users are forecast to use a smartphone by 2017.
As of 2013, 6.2 percent of India’s overall population owned a smartphone, a figure that is set to rise to almost 20 percent by 2017. Android was the most commonly installed operating system in India in September 2014, with the Google-backed company holding almost 50 percent of the country’s smartphone OS market share.
This increase in smartphone penetration in India is mirrored by the fact that India’s share of the global smartphone market is forecast to more than treble between 2013 and 2017 to over 10 percent. In 2013 alone, over 40 million units of smartphones were shipped in India, a figure that stood at just over 10 million in 2011.
A survey conducted in 2014 showed that 16 percent of mobile users in India watched videos on their phones and 11 percent used social media apps. The increasing use of the smartphone as means of watching media and surfing the internet is reflected by the unit shipments of devices with larger screens. In the second quarter of 2012, less than 5 million units of smartphones with screens larger than 5 inches were shipped in India. However this figure rose to over 30 million unit shipments a year later.
