Trends In Content Consumption On Smartphones From Google India

Smartphones sales will overtake PC sales by middle of 2012 and this has huge implications in the way content will be consumed globally, according to Mahesh Narayanan, country head for mobile at Google India. The frequency with which devices are being connected itself has thrown up humongous opportunities, said Narayanan while speaking at the digital and mobile marketing conference Click Asia Summit 2012.

"In 2 days alone (24th and 25th December, 2011), 3.7 million Android devices were activated. Additionally, there have already been more than 10 billion downloads on the Android market; this number grew by 4 billion (from 6 billion in July, 2011 to 10 billion in December, 2011) in only a matter of six months," he shared.

Truly, the fact that there are more than 1 billion mobile Internet users in the world today only (almost one in seven of all people globally) is proof enough that mobile has now become a primary device for content consumption.

Narayanan also shared some interesting data:

There are 400 million mobile video playbacks globally on a daily basis!

There are 8 million Google Ad impressions in a day on mobile phones (the brands also would be loving it)

Out of the total views of the video of the Tamil song 'Kolaveri Di' which went viral few weeks ago, 30 per cent were on mobile phones(that's why you keep hearing the song everywhere from a bus stand in Delhi to a crowded local train station in Mumbai)

Google Search on mobile witnessed a 170 per cent year-on-year (YoY) growth in 2011 in India ( this shows that 'Search' has become the starting point of the mobile internet experience for many, similar to the conventional internet experience on PCs).

Narayanan added that the lines between Tablets and smartphones are blurring (one such example is the Galaxy Note Tabphone) and focus on mobile specific sites should be paramount (like many mobile phones don't support Flash that is present in conventional websites).

The next wave could be product purchase on the go. "There will be a transition from impulse purchases (like tickets, bookings etc) to proper purchases on mobile phones (products and services) because the users don't differentiate between 'm-commerce' and 'e-commerce'," he said.