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Mobile internet browsing fast catching up: report

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CIOL Bureau
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BANGALORE, INDIA: InMobi, the largest mobile advertising network in India, has released a survey revealing nuances of mobile internet usage patterns in India.

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The survey was conducted at IIT School of Management and surveyed 205 college-aged consumers. Although a very specific sample group, the results do offer some insight into India’s youth generation who make up the largest population sector in the country.  

According to the survey, fifty-seven percent (57 per cent) of respondents browse the internet on their mobile phones, and close to one-third of respondents who surf the Internet through their mobile phones engage with brands that advertise. Of whose who engaged with the ads, they were most likely to visit the ad’s website (72.5 per cent) but also went so far as to call the company (10 per cent), or buy the product (17.5 per cent).

Survey results also showed that the college-aged consumers are equally interested in almost all genres of mobile advertising, as long as the advertisements have something significant to offer and do not interfere with the mobile browsing experience. Among ads, those most welcomed are fast free coupons, free mobile games with embedded unobtrusive ads, money transfer services, free humorous clips and Bluetooth-based “alerts” for items on sale nearby.

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Mobile internet usage broke down in the following way:

*Respondents may select more than one website

India is currently the second largest mobile market in the world after China, and nearly 10 to 12 million mobile subscribers are added monthly in the country. (Source: VitalAnalytics) The country’s largest cities have the highest mobile Internet usage; however, many small to midsized towns such as Meerut, Aligarh, Jalandhar, Kanpur, Kota, Hassan and Trivandrum generated almost a fourth of the mobile browsing traffic.

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Mobile internet browsing is also spread across income groups of those with mobile phones. Specifically, 20 per cent of the respondents who access the Internet on their mobile phones are from the working class demographic, 38 per cent are from the lower middle class and 42 per cent are from the upper middle class. This data shows that mobile Internet usage is not limited to only the upper middle class.

Mobile is clearly becoming a mass medium in India – having extended out from only the most affluent individuals in the very largest metropolitan areas.

In addition, Airtel is the clear leader in terms of the percentage of respondents browsing the Internet on their mobile phones. Reliance is the only service provider where less than 50 per cent of the respondents browse the internet, most likely because Reliance phones are not used frequently for value-added services.

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