mobile social media in india
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Mobile Social Media in India
It is now common knowledge that the key discriminating factor in the General Elections of
2014 was social media. The battle for the people’s mandate was fought and won in the
virtual sphere. Narendra Modi gave his party and himself an incredible triumph by selling
hope, and selling it well. By leveraging the power of social media so vigorously, he captured
the imagination and support of netizens in one fell swoop. And needless to say, a major
chunk of these netizens are the youth, the largest constituent of India’s headcount of 1.2
billion. Vigorous campaigning on Facebook, Twitter and the like saw the creation of the
Opinionated Youth like never before.
While one can wax eloquent about the Elections of 2014, it is important to put this trend in
the right perspective and understand its significance. In the 21st century, social media offers
the single most potent means of engaging the perpetually connected youth, and deriving
disproportionate benefit in return. In fact, there has never been a better way of
communicating with them, due in no small part to the proliferation of the means of
connecting to the internet. Smartphones and tablets are today commonplace among the
youth, and have a very comfortable existence alongside the laptop. Add to that the fact that
these devices are carried by people wherever they go and you have the perfect recipe for an
all-out social media revolution.
It is important to understand what comes under the mobile devices umbrella. Indian
consumers primarily access the internet on the go through internet enabled feature phones,
smartphones and tablets. While feature phones have been in the market for quite some
time now, the past two or three years have seen an exponential increase in the adoption of
smartphones and tablets. It is difficult to spell out a clear cut difference between a
smartphone and a feature phone, but for the purpose of this article, a smartphone can be
defined as a device that works on a sophisticated operating system with a higher processing
power. As per a survey carried out by Nielsen in 2013, 81% of the population on the internet
uses mobiles (feature phones), 10 % use smartphones, 3% use tablets. It can be seen that in
spite of the widespread adoption of smartphones, feature phones maintain a stronghold on
the mobile internet domain, although smartphones, riding on the back of feature rich
applications and a much more enhanced browsing experience, are seeing a significant rise in
adoption. One need not look far and wide for proof. Over the past year a lot of new players
have thrown their hat into the smartphone ring, and are not shying away from taking the big
brands head on. An increase in choice has caught the fancy of consumers, and smartphones
are selling like hot cakes, as made apparent by a near 3-fold increase in sales in 2013 over
2012. The scene is not quite as rosy for tablets, though, which experienced a decline in the
early part of 2013 and continues to experience laggard growth. The reasons for this could be
a lack of differentiation between tablets and smartphones in the minds of consumers, and
issues related to distribution channels and manufacturers. It can therefore be said that
smartphones are well on the way to becoming synonymous with mobile internet access in
the near future.