India and China now account for nearly 50 per cent of the global mobile traffic, compared to their 12 per cent share 10 years ago. The growth in digital infrastructure has led to a surge in Internet appetite in these countries.
In 2012, India contributed to only 2 per cent of the world’s mobile data traffic and China held a 10 per cent share, while the western market accounted for 75 per cent of the global market share. The two Asian tigers, India and China, grew massively in a span of two years. According to the latest data for 2022, India holds a 21 per cent share of the global mobile data traffic and China 27 per cent, while the western markets of North America and Europe account for only a quarter of the global traffic for mobile data services.
India has the highest mobile data consumption rate at 12 GB/user a month in the world, and the country is adding as many as 25 million new smartphone users every quarter. According to OoKla, between September and October, India recorded the highest median mobile download speed in the last 13 months (from 13.87 Mbps in September to 16.50 Mbps).
The proliferation of digital infrastructure and online services have a huge role to play in these trends, especially for India. Within this decade, telecom operators such as Reliance Jio reduced the cost of data massively, allowing more and more people to come online using 4G services. Indian telcos continue to have the lowest monthly ARPUs in the world at $2.5 per month.
Consumer tech start-ups, entertainment services and digital financial inclusion initiatives by the government (UPI) have also contributed to the data consumption boom. The sheer population of India also massively contributes to these numbers.
Sanchit Vir Gogia, Chief Analyst & CEO at Greyhound Research, said: “The kind of scale that consumer mobility enjoys in India is unlike anywhere else in the world. Consumer-facing businesses have to cater to a massive scale. Moreover, as devices and data plans become cheaper, more and more customers are moving from 2G to 4G services. The sheer depth of variety among Indian consumers is also massively increasing demand in the country, as brands and marketers jump to cater to the demand in every vernacular.”
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Published on December 4, 2022
