Mobile data use per person in India to jump fivefold by 2021

New Delhi: With rapid increase in the number of smartphones, average mobile data consumption per smartphone in India is expected to increase five times and account for 99 per cent of total traffic from mobile phones by 2021, as per a study by telecom gear maker Ericsson.

"Data traffic per active smartphone is expected to increase fivefold from 1.4 GigaByte (GB) per month in 2015 to 7 GB per month by 2021. In 2021, 99 per cent of the region's mobile traffic will be from data," Ericsson Mobility Report India edition released on Tuesday said.

The growth in data consumption can also be attributed to rise in mobile applications usage and spread of high speed network. "The WCDMA or HSPA (3G) population coverage is projected to increase to 90 per cent by the end of 2021, the population coverage of LTE (4G) networks in India is expected to reach 45 per cent by the end of 2021 in India," Ericsson India Region Head Paolo Colella said.

The number of smartphone subscriptions in the country is expected to record a significant jump and touch 810 million by 2021. As per the report, mobile phone users in India give more importance to voice than data services, indicating that it is smartphone users who drive the need for better data services and they are even ready to pay for good service.

"Young smartphone users aged 15-24 years old drive the need for better data speed and data coverage and have a higher inclination to pay a premium for the same," the report said.

In India, streaming music and watching videos are the most popular forms of entertainment and WhatsApp Messenger is the top mobile app used on smartphones.

"Around 50 percent of smartphone users stream music on mobile apps every week, and more than one in two internet users watch short online video clips on a weekly basis," the report said.

E-commerce apps such as Flipkart and Snapdeal are growing in popularity in India. File sharing app Xender is the top mobile app by average monthly data usage, followed by file sharing app SHAREit and the YouTube video sharing app, it said.

The global Ericsson Mobility Report released earlier this month stated that India grew the most in terms of mobile subscribers with over 21 million net additions in first quarter this year followed by Myanmar and Indonesia with over 5 million net additions, the US and Pakistan with over 3 million each.