Chennai: The average time spent by Indians on smartphones is the highest in the world and the duration for watching short videos is likely to rise fourfold by 2025, telecom gear maker Nokia said in a report.
In 2020, data traffic grew 36 per cent year-on-year, primarily due to rise in 4G data consumption. 4G subscribers surpassed 700 million, with 100 million new additions during the year, said the Mobile Broadband India Traffic Index (MBiT) 2021 report on mobile broadband performance in India.
“In the last five years, we have grown 63 times in terms of data growth that has happened. It is phenomenal. It is a record. I don’t think any country, any region, any market can beat this record of how data have been consumed in the last five years,” Nokia chief marketing officer Amit Marwah said while sharing details of the report.
According to the report, 164 petabytes of data were consumed in December 2015, which reached close to 10,000 petabytes in December 2020 on mobile networks.
The research showed that 4G alone constituted nearly 99 per cent of the total data traffic consumed across the country in 2020.
“The phenomenal growth in data consumption in India will drive demand for enhanced broadband and fixed capacity,” Sanjay Malik, senior vice-president and head of India market, Nokia, said.