There were 616 million unique mobile users in India, by the end of June 2016 with at least 1 billion mobile connections (SIM cards) at the same time, according The Mobile Economy Report 2016 (pdf) compiled by Global System Mobile Association (GSMA). This makes India the second largest mobile market in the world, while GSMA estimates that the number of unique users will touch 951 million with around 1.4 billion mobile connections by 2020. In addition, only 15% of the 616 million mobile users are on mobile broadband as of 2015.This is expected to touch 48% by 2020 in the country, signalling that close to half of mobile users will be connected to the internet via cellular networks. India is also the second largest smartphone market with 238 million smartphone users; this is expected to touch 688 million by 2020, according to GSMA. Note that India accounts for more than a quarter of mobile connections in Asia Pacific, with over 1 billion connections, while the 616 million users translates to a mobile network penetration of 47% as of 2015. Improving affordability, falling device prices and better network coverage aided by operator investments, together with positive policy support and healthy macro-economic conditions, will help deliver over 330 million new unique subscribers by 2020, added the report. Network-type growth 4G LTE networks in India have seen a “sluggish growth” since its deployment in 2012 due to the lack of affordable spectrum in the sub-GHz spectrum bands, the report said. Note that in…
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