India has half a billion mobile subscribers and it’s growing faster than any other market

Only 36% of India’s population has a mobile phone. Photo credit: American Center Mumbai

The number of mobile subscribers in India will cross 500 million this year, cementing its position as the second biggest mobile market after China. But the best is yet to come.

New data from global mobile industry body GSMA says India will be the fastest growing mobile market in the world between now and the year 2020. One out of every eight mobile phone subscribers in the world is in India already.

GSMA forecasts that India will have three-quarters of a billion mobile subscribers by 2020 as mobile phones get into the hands of more than half the population. The number of SIM connections will be 1.3 billion. (Some people have multiple SIMs, so one connection does not equate to one individual.)

Only 36 percent of the country’s population has a mobile phone, compared to the global average of 50 percent – which means there is a lot of headroom for faster growth in the years ahead.

See: India to overtake US next month with 402 million internet users

More smartphones

Another point of interest for tech startups targeting this huge market is the rapid adoption of smartphones connecting millions more to the internet each month. Fuelling this is the availability of a raft of affordable devices from international as well as homegrown brands. This is gaining further momentum with the likes of Xiaomi and OnePlus setting up manufacturing plants in India.

GSMA expects more than half a billion new smartphone connections to be added in India between 2015 and 2020. This will bring the total to 690 million smartphones, up from 149 million in 2014.