By Nandagopal Rajan
The number of mobile internet users in India seems all set for explosive growth with a report by Internet & Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) and IMRB International predicting that there will be 155 million people accessing the web through their phones by the end of March.
With a quarter-over-quarter growth of 20%, this number is expected to cross 185 million by June 2014, says the ‘Mobile Internet In India 2013’ report released Wednesday.
According to the report, in October 2013, India had 110 million mobile internet users, with just 25 million in rural India. Urban India’s dominance of this segment is expected to continue for at least a couple of quarters.
Indicating that many Indian’s were accessing the internet for the first time on mobile devices, the report says across both urban and rural India over half the internet users where on the mobile.
One of the reasons for this increase in mobile internet penetration is the fact that the average cost per user fell to Rs 387 from Rs 460 in 2012, even though the actual per cent of data costs in mobile bills has gone up slightly from 43% to 45% over the past year.
The other reason is the falling costs of Internet enabled smart devices. In fact, a I-Cube Mobile Internet survey conducted in 35 cities in 2013 puts the median cost of web-enabled mobile phone at Rs 7,000 with 52% of mobile internet users owning devices priced between Rs 6,501 and Rs 14,000.