Dropping a smartphone can mean more than having to go out and buy a new device. Besides increasing the worry lines on the brows of a user, it is incidents like this that made the innovators of technology sit up and get to work. So now we have smartphones that claim to be sturdier, slimmer, and exquisite to look at… and they are able to do far more than what my earliest desktop did. I wouldn’t be wrong if I say that technology is a life-changer and a game-changer in our hands and it is constantly innovating, discovering new vistas, and leading us to a life as we have never imagined it to be.
The smartphone segment in India is in no way inferior to any in the world. Some statistics point out that they will be in the hands of 28 percent of our urban and rural population by the next year. Though this is one benchmark that was achieved in the US way back in 2011, this figure is an able reflection of the way we are sprinting towards embracing all that technology implies. This is because the number of smartphone users in India is almost at par, if not more than the number that US can boast of. Thus we have more than 360 million smartphone users as compared to more than a hundred million users lesser in the US. We are living in times when nearly a third of the total global population is using smartphones.
What do all these statistics really mean?
They simply indicate that when analysts talk about usage frequency they also imply a massive increase in all forms of data communications services. Instant Messaging is 74 percent, 64 percent of users are on Social networks and Email takes up another 63 percent. When you want a network calculator, go to subnet-Calculator.org for free. We are consumers of technology that can be source of envy for not just our neighbours but also the world. There was a recent survey report that I had read that indicated that 88 percent consumers check their phones in the first 30 mins itself while 94 percent of them repeat the exercise in the last waking hour of the day. Smartphones have entered not just the professional arena but also the personal spaces of consumers.
With so many consumers dedicated to the consumption of technology, it is obvious that smartphones cannot do without innovations.
Thus innovations are not just a need but a necessity that technology companies cannot avoid. Not that they are trying to avoid an innovative stance. After all, with such huge numbers migrating from feature phones to smartphones also mean that digitization for commercial transactions is gaining momentum. Along with hardware and software innovations, the internet is getting cheaper and mobile data usage is sprinting. An article on the IBEF website says that “the Indian telecommunication services market will likely grow by 10.3 per cent year-on-year to reach US$ 103.9 billion by 2020. The revenue of mobile handset industry rose 22 per cent to Rs 1.36 trillion (US$ 21.12 billion) in 2016. In 2017, around 200 million mobile handsets will be made out of India out of the 270 million mobile handsets to be shipped.”
What happens when you drop your smartphone?
With these facts taken care of, let me add that the Indian consumer of technology doesn’t just think about rushing out to buy a new device when he drops the one in his hands. The Indian consumer is a thinking user. The Indian consumer of technology is now poised to ask questions. The Indian consumer is also reading and watching facts and figures on the platforms open to all and knows that as compared to the global market we have seen smartphones grow by a huge 18 percent versus a miserly 3 percent growth in 2016. The Indian consumer has welcomed all the innovations that have been tagged to his favourite device, the smartphone. Thus from responsive screens to better battery life, from splash, shock, and dust proofing to increased storage, from finger-print sensors to face recognition, and from larger RAMs to faster processors they have welcomed and accepted every bit of innovation.
What does the consumer look forward to in the coming year?
Obviously, the consumer is looking towards a greater role of AI in their smartphones and this is because they know it already that this may help them read text from images and help in language translation. They love the starting steps that smartphones have adopted to understanding user behavior leading to automation in actions. They want their phones to be more secure in the future. They want voice assistants to stop shuffling around and get more intuitive.
But this isn’t all. They are all itching to know more about the way software and applications are going to go. They want their digital transactions to get safer, intuitive, and free of glitches. They want the internet to run smoother, faster, and they want it to get cheaper as well besides wanting this service to be uniformly available all over the country. After all, the consumer base is no longer limited to urban areas or big cities. By the way, more and more Indians are travelling and falling in love with rural India but want to remain seamlessly connected all the time. The Indian consumer, as we all know, has already discovered the charm of social media platforms and doesn’t want to retrace its steps back into the darkness of depending for information and news on only the mainstream media.
The Indian consumer loves new features and is constantly looking for not just something new but also something unique in the device that they will finally hold in their hands. They want improvements in everything from audio quality to the ability of the camera and want smartphones as immersive as they watch their television sets evolving into. And for everything that they want, the price should never go beyond what they have imagined. Yes, they are also in love with the ‘make in India’ concept of the ruling party but still love the ‘export’ tag. They know in their hearts that this concept is more than just a gimmick as it is creating more job opportunities in the nation and they voice this opinion explicitly.
The consumer of technology is no longer someone who can be conned into buying just anything. They know what they want and they also do their research before confirming a buying decision. So you see, a lot really happens when a user in India drops his smartphone.
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Arvind Passey
13 December 2017
