Ericsson has for the first time released the India appendix of its Mobility Report predicting the total number of mobile subscriptions increasing to approximately 1.4 billion by 2020, resulting in a population penetration of 100 percent. [related-post] GSM/EDGE subscriber base is expected to peak in 2015 and then decline as subscribers migrate to 3G services. The WCDMA/HSPA subscriptions are expected to grow from over 120 million in 2014 to around 620 million by 2020, with the proportion of WCDMA/HSPA subscriptions in the total subscription base touching 45 per cent by that time. LTE subscriptions are likely to reach more than 230 million, but only around 17 per cent of the total subscription base by 2020. GSM/EDGE technology currently coers 95 percent of the Indian population, while WCDMA/HSPA is expected to cover approximately 90 percent by the end of 2020. Additionally, around 40 per cent of the population will be covered by LTE networks by 2020. Interestingly, the proportion of people aged over 50 who use smartphones quadrupled between 2013 and 2015, albeit from a small base. There was a three-fold growth in the proportion of 31-40 year old mobile data users during the same period. On average, Indian smartphone users spend over three hours a day on their smartphones and 25 percent of them check their phones over 100 times a day. Around one third of the time spent is used for apps, while 65 per cent prefer video streaming to downloading videos on handsets. Affordability of smartphones will drive the overall affordability of mobile broadband in India. The number of smartphone subscriptions is expected to reach over 750 million by 2020, up from 130 million in 2014. This will result in a monthly mobile data consumption increase of 18-fold by 2020.
