Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers’ partner Mary Meeker has released the internet trend report for 2017. This annual report is considered to be the best way to get up to speed with everything going on in the technology sector. This 355 slides report lays down the developments and growth in the tech sector and is the most informative research report on the progression and regression of the various sub-sectors of the industry.
Here’s what the 2017 report says about the Indian Industry:
India currently has 355 million Internet users, making us the second highest country right behind China. While Indian Internet popularity grew 28% in mid-June 2016 with 40% year on year growth, Internet penetration is still at 27%. The 50% Internet penetration mark is still far away.
Smartphone prices are still high at 8% GDP. However, data cost has dropped from 3% to 1.3% since 2015, meaning that more people can afford to use a smartphone. India crossed the US market in the year 2016 for the number of Google Play downloads and is the number one global market for time spent on Android. Including the first quarter of 2017, India’s smartphone shipments have continued to grow by 15% year on year.
Chinese smartphones like Xiomi, Oppo and Vivo made considerable gains as increased competition has reduced prices and improved quality. Made in India smartphones Lava, Micromax and Jio are battling it out for an inexpensive 4G feature phone. On the one hand, the average selling price for Micromax, Lava, and Karbonn has fallen, while there was a rise of Chinese players. Overall the average selling price of smartphones has stabled. The fight of Lenovo, Xiaomi, Oppo, Vivo for the smartphone market with quality features and online distribution has intensified with the entry of Reliance Jio’s Lyf branded phones.
The mobile web traffic is well above global average at 80% and second only to Nigeria, with Indians spending 45% of their time on mobile phones. Indians spend 45% of their time on mobiles looking at Entertainment, with Search, Social, and Messaging coming in second at 34% while only 2% of their time is spent on news and media.
Since the entry of Reliance Jio, Bharti Airtel, Vodafone and Idea collectively own 60% share of broadband subscribers, have also had to cut down data rates. There was a 10% decline in data costs per GB decline on a quarterly basis, while voice costs declined 4% quarter on quarter. There was a further decline of data costs by 20% among incumbents by March 2017.
Google Chrome became the second most preferred web browser in India, beaten by China’s UC Web with 50% market share. Whatsapp is India’s top downloaded Android App followed by Facebook messenger.
The report also states PM Narendra Modi’s policies, including Digital India, focusing on online payments, is a factor in the strong growth of India’s internet usage. However, devices and data are still expensive despite the falling prices. The report also spoke about digital payments and that UPI-based payments stood at $359 million till March 2017. Over 82% of the population is covered under the Aadhaar scheme.
This was just about the Indian Internet scenario. The Mary Meeker report covers many more insightful areas ranging from digital streaming, Facebook and Google ad placements, Cloud services, online gaming to health care.
