Growing smartphone user base to give push to apps in India, says analyst

Growing smartphone user base to give push to apps in India, says analyst

India has firmly made its position as one of the countries to watch out for as far as growth in the area of smartphone is concerned. Along with smartphones, the market for mobile applications seems to be on a forward march in the country too, it has emerged.Enterprise mobility solutions firm Xcube Labs has said that the growth of the mobile applications market will follow the exponential growth of the number of smartphone users in the country. In a statement to PTI, Xcube Labs’ CEO Bharat Lingam said that according to estimates the company has currently, India will have a whopping 400 million smartphone users in the country by 2016. “This is an impressive figure and it will eventually lead to development of a more robust mobile app market in the country," he said.

Apps get a push

India has fast started to make a big switch from feature phones to smartphones. As handset and carrier prices drop, more and more people in the country are preferring to pick up smartphones now. In fact, this year’s July-September phase saw the sales of feature phones dip for the first time ever. A CyberMedia Research report showed that mobile handset shipments grew 10.9 percent to 62.9 million units during the same period this year. Out of this total, 51.8 million units were feature phones but 11.1 million were smartphones.Here’s where apps step in. "We see a similar opportunity for mobile apps in India. The growth of mobile apps in India is driven by the growth of smartphones, availability of bandwidth and of local content and relevance of global apps to this ecosystem," Lingam said. Xcube sees an opportunity for users to initially put to use popular utility and entertainment apps, on the lines of WhatsApp and Angry Birds, later moving on to more localised app content and entertainment.In the early stages, it is expected that app investment will come for large media and entertainment segments. Following critical mass gain, smaller players will be able to put up content too. The only problem for the developers, says Lingam, will be enticing users to take the app. (With inputs from agencies)

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