India's smartphone data consumption to grow 5x by 2022: Cisco

Smartphone users in India will more than double to 829 million in four years, accounting for 38% of all networked device users in the country, predicts a study by networking giant Cisco. The number of internet users through the same period is expected to grow to 840 million, up from 357 million users last year, the study said. 

“By 2022, smartphone data consumption will increase by 5X in India which proves the dominance of smartphones as the communications hub for social media, video consumption, communications and business applications as well as traditional voice,” said Sanjay Kaul, president of Cisco’s Asia Pacific and Japan service provider business. 

Overall, the number of networked devices in the country, including smartphones, will grow to 2.2 billion by 2022, up from 1.6 billion in 2017. This proliferation of smart devices, the study said, will drive up India’s per capita consumption to nearly 14 gigabytes in four years from 2.7 gigabytes last year. 

The findings of the study make up what Cisco dubs its visual networking index or VNI, whose forecast includes global, regional and country level projections and trends associated with fixed and mobile networks.

Currently, IP networks in India carry 108 petabytes of data each day. This is expected to reach 646 petabytes per day by 2022 on the back of the projected growth in smartphone users. 

“As the usage and expectations increase, the opportunity in the market for service providers rises simultaneously. At the same time, it is also imperative for them to modernise network and embrace the latest technologies for efficient service delivery and build capacities to meet the bandwidth demand that market is demanding,” said Kaul.

Among other forecasts, the VNI predicts that internet video traffic will touch 13.5 exabytes per month by 2022, up from 1.5 exabytes per month in 2017. This will account for 77% of all internet traffic in four years compared to 58% in 2017. There will be 1.2 billion IPv6 capable fixed and mobile devices in the next four years, growing at a compounded annual growth rate of 28%. Finally, the total number of Wi-Fi hotspots is expected to grow 116-fold to 6 million by 2022.