Google banks on Mobile Internet growth in India

Google has predicted that Internet usage in India will grow manifold as more and more cheap smartphones become available to the general public.

Currently, India is peaking with more than 100 million Internet users, which is less than 10 percent of its population. But, this number is set to change with the help of budget smartphones – a category of phones tailor-made to suit the requirements of the Indian consumer who seeks both affordability and features in a handset. Users accessing Internet on these phones will add huge numbers to existing Internet users.

In terms of Internet usage, India lags behind China and USA. But it is said that India will boom up to 300 million users in the next 3 years.

Rajan Anandan, Google’s India Chief told Reuters, “The next 200 million new users will largely be mobile-first users and out of those, 100 million will be mobile-only users.

We'd like to see India become a 100-150 million smartphone market, and to do that, we've got to have $100 smartphones.”

Currently, there are only 10 million smartphone users in India. Anandan has a case-in-point as Google’s Android OS is one the reasons for cheap smartphones becoming available for the general masses in India. Every company, from Spice to Karbonn banks on the Android OS for their budget smartphones.

Currently, the cheapest smartphone available in India is Micromax’s Andro A60, which comes with a price of Rs.4280 and runs on Android 2.1 – Éclair OS.

Anandan further stressed that besides cheaper handsets, India needs the price of 3G bandwidth to go down for taking Internet to the masses.

Google has also started an initiative on the same lines by offering free websites to small and medium sized business in India. It’s target is to get at least 500 million such businesses online in the coming  years.