BANGALORE, India and PALO ALTO, Calif (September 10, 2009) Today InMobi, the largest mobile advertising network in India, released a survey revealing nuances of mobile internet usage patterns in India. The survey was conducted at IIT School of Management and surveyed 205 college-aged consumers. Although a very specific sample group, the results do offer some insight into India’s youth generation who make up the largest population sector in the country. According to the survey, fifty-seven percent (57%) of respondents browse the internet on their mobile phones, and close to one-third of respondents who surf the Internet through their mobile phones engage with brands that advertise. Of whose who engaged with the ads, they were most likely to visit the ad’s website (72.5%) but also went so far as to call the company (10%), or buy the product (17.5%). Survey results also showed that the college-aged consumers are equally interested in almost all genres of mobile advertising, as long as the advertisements have something significant to offer and do not interfere with the mobile browsing experience. Among ads, those most welcomed are fast free coupons, free mobile games with embedded unobtrusive ads, money transfer services, free humorous clips and Bluetooth-based “alerts” for items on sale nearby. Mobile internet usage broke down in the following way: popular-websites-browsed-on-mobile
*Respondents may select more than one website India is currently the second largest mobile market in the world after China, and nearly 10 to 12 million mobile subscribers are added monthly in the country. (Source: VitalAnalytics) The country’s largest cities have the highest mobile Internet usage; however, many small to midsized towns such as Meerut, Aligarh, Jalandhar, Kanpur, Kota, Hassan and Trivandrum generated almost a fourth of the mobile browsing traffic. Mobile internet browsing is also spread across income groups of those with mobile phones. Specifically, 20% of the respondents who access the Internet on their mobile phones are from the working class demographic, 38% are from the lower middle class and 42% are from the upper middle class. This data shows that mobile Internet usage is not limited to only the upper middle class. mobile-internet-usage-by-income-level
Mobile is clearly becoming a mass medium in India – having extended out from only the most affluent individuals in the very largest metropolitan areas. In addition, Airtel is the clear leader in terms of the percentage of respondents browsing the Internet on their mobile phones. Reliance is the only service provider where less than 50% of the respondents browse the internet, most likely because Reliance phones are not used frequently for value-added services.
Founded in 2007, InMobi - formerly mKhoj - is a global mobile ad network that delivers the best results to its partners through its intelligent mobile web advertising solutions. InMobi allows advertisers to discover their target audience using its advanced targeting technology via mobile internet sites and it enables publishers of such sites to earn advertising revenue. The mission of InMobi is to provide both the business model and technology to enable the growth of the mobile internet ecosystem. InMobi has offices in Palo Alto, California; Bangalore, India; Mumbai, India and Singapore
The survey was conducted at the Department of Management Studies, IIT Delhi via Google online surveys on behalf of InMobi from March 4, 2009 to April 10, 2009 among 205 children and adults spanning across all ages. The survey was conducted in two parts: the first was to determine the demographics and browsing habits of mobile internet users, while the second was to gauge the expectations of consumers of India in terms of mobile advertising. This online survey is not based on a probability sample and therefore no estimate of theoretical sampling error can be calculated.
