India’s smartphone market is huge, but the best is yet to come

Every day, it seems, we’re publishing stories about smartphones in India. Mobile apps are gaining success. More and more Indians are buying smartphones. But what does “more” mean? According to a recent Pew Research study that compared smartphone ownership across the globe to similar figures in 2013 and 2015, it seems that India’s barely scratched the surface in terms of smartphone power.

World smartphone usage has grown worldwide. The reason the study mentions 2013 as a comparison point is because that’s the first time Pew conducted a study on smartphone ownership. Around the world, a global median of 43 percent reported owning a smartphone, while only 12 percent do not own a mobile phone at all. Compare that to 17 percent and 22 percent of India, respectively.

India’s figures fit into the study’s conclusion that poorer countries in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia have lower rates of smartphone ownership. To truly put those figures in context though, one has to look at population numbers. India has a population of over 1.2 billion people. That’s over 200 million people on Androids or iPhones and the reason the country is either the second or third ranked smartphone market in the world.

South Korea, which ranks highest in smartphone ownership rates with 88 percent, has 44 million smartphone owners in comparison.

Perhaps it’s not as surprising, then, that India didn’t make Pew’s list of emerging countries with steep increases in smartphone ownership rates from 2013 – a single percentage increase involves more than 12 million people. However, China, the only country more populous than India, has seen a 21 percent increase in smartphone owners in the past two years.

So, what does that all mean? Smartphones are still new to India, and rates have plenty of room to climb. Meanwhile, the next two years have the power to be game-changing.