India now has more than a billion smartphone users

As China’s mobile market continues to mature and saturate, all eyes are turning to India as the country’s mobile market continues to boom. Earlier this week, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India announced that the country has become the second in the world to reach one billion mobile users. This further solidifies India’s position as one of the three most-important mobile markets in the world, alongside China and the United States. The growth can not only be attributed to the country’s growing wealth, but to the ridiculously affordable mobile service in the country, which stems from the fact that there are about a dozen major service providers competing for dominance, compared to America’s four.

The Indian smartphone market made a 0.7 percent increase from September to October, vaulting the nation over the 1 billion user threshold to 1.03 billion users. The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India just released this information yesterday, making India the second country in the world to reach this milestone. Anyone care to take a guess at what that first country was? Anyone? Anyone? India’s population, which triples that of the United States, has created a ravenous market for the smartphone industry. Whereas the US really only has four major carriers, a proportional twelve battle over subscribers and contract holders in India. This fierce competition combines with other factors to make India’s phone bills some of the least expensive in the world. It’s no surprise that smartphone manufacturers and service providers in every time zone are turning an interested eye to this smartphone-hungry nation. Although the US remains a major market for flagship and high-end devices, mid-range and entry-level manufacturers are having far more success in the continent of Asia. Bulk sales and mass usership speak for themselves. After all, India has had more smartphone users than the US since – are you ready for this? – 2008. In the ~8 years between then and now, US smartphone usage has increased only by about 100 million users. In the same time frame, India has seen a number of new smartphone subscribers that surpasses the total population of the United States. Almost times two.