Almost every year in various kinds of year-ahead predictions about Indian internet, you can find one about mobile internet. So why would 2013 be different?
If we look at the latest Gartner Hype Cycle, mobile internet has already climbed to the ‘Slope of Enlightenment’ and been on its way to mainstream adoption in less than two years. Three years into 3G initiation, operators, platform servicers, hardware providers and content producers have finally accumulated enough users and resources to kick start the entire value chain in 2012 as shown below
Maturity of mobile internet ecosystem in India is exemplified in all participating components, including terminals, platforms, operators and content. The increasing smartphone penetration and tablet proliferation enabled people to enjoy better designed content and use more powerful apps on the-go. Since the summer of 2012, we saw more models of low-cost smartphones to become available. We expect this trend to increase smartphone adoption, particularly among the high internet usage demographics of 15 – 35 years old.
Mobile internet platform include mobile OS, content serving mechanism, and payment system. Symbian still dominates Indian market with decreasing volume. Nevertheless, Android is experiencing hyper-growth with much better OS, content serving mechanism, and payment system integration.
We noted increasing cooperating activities in this field recently involving service providers, operators and hardware manufacturers. The motive for operators is to cultivate the habit of using mobile data and earn the data fee elsewhere over a longer term.
We saw proliferation of apps and sites specially designed for mobile usage built with social and local features in 2012. Apart from quantity, what really made the difference is in quality. Killer apps such as WhatsApp and mobile Facebook / Twitter have emerged to create user stickiness and facilitate smartphone adoption in return.
Looking at the history of Japan’s mobile internet, in 3G era, entertainment and social content were the main themes in the early stage, followed by eCommerce and services. Social network was picking up rapidly along with the trend on desktop. Especially in mobile internet, people tend to consume more ‘fast-food’ content such as instant message, micro-blog and social games than traditional full-length, time-consuming literatures, articles and MMORPGs. Among these, social media, instant messaging and gaming have been consistently ranked as top purposes to use mobile internet.