In what could be a clear indicator of how the Indian smartphone segment is shaping up, Opera Software’s State of the Android Mobile Web report show that India is the fastest growing smartphone market in the world with the user base growing by 120 per cent in the past year. Android phones grew by 160 per cent, and for the first time the Opera Mini browser was used more on smartphones than basic phones, suggesting that feature phone users were upgrading to smartphone at a fast pace. India now has the largest number of Opera Mini users in the world.
As expected, the sub-Rs 10,000 phones formed 77 per cent of Opera’s users in India, with the sub-Rs 5,000 phone category growing fast. It is not a surprise then that Micromax phones formed a bulk of Opera users in India with 30 per cent, while Samsung followed with 25 per cent. However, Samsung users take all the top 10 positions in Android handsets used by Opera Mini users and also consume 56% of data on the top 100 Android devices. In comparison, Micromax users consume 21% data.
If you look at what is enganging Indian mobile users on the web, Facebook comes on top with seven out of every ten webpages viewed by Opera Mini users. But shopping portals clocked 365 per cent growth in the last year as mobile users flocked etailers. Flipkart led with the most time spent per user, while followed by Snapdeal and Myntra.
More Indian users were also looking at online classifieds, a segment that jumped by 150 per cent. From a neck to neck fight last year, Quikr has emerged as a clear market leader with a year-on-year growth of 243.5 per cent, Olx is now second with a 120.7 pe cent rise in views. Interestingly, users spent the most time on OLX.
The report said more users are now accessing education and job portals, as well as blogs. But video was a clear rising star growing by 205% since 2013. YouTube was the clear leader, followed by Dailymotion and Metacafe.
The report is based on aggregated information obtained from Opera Mini servers. Due to its data compression technologies, Opera Mini is quite popular among Indian smartphone users as well as manufacturers.
Sunil Kamath, Vice President for South Asia at Opera Software, said it is likely that the smartphone growth in India fueled by aggressively priced smartphones by Indian OEMs. “Currently, we have partnerships with 16 Indian OEMs who have preinstalled Opera Mini on over 350 models of Android devices. Opera Mini?s unique data compression technology, which lets users browse faster, make it a great fit for Indian handsets,? he said in a release.
