Feature-to-smartphone conversion may pick up pace in 2023

New Delhi: The conversion of feature phones to smartphones, crucial to both the growth of the handset industry and for telecom industry revenues, is set to pick up in 2023 after falling to a four-year low in 2022.

Of the installed base, new smartphone users coming from feature phones was 6.1% in 2019, which fell to 5.7% in 2020, 5.6% in 2021, and 5.4% in 2022, according to Counterpoint Research. The reason is mainly affordability and a lack of relevant use cases. The featurephone-to-smartphone conversion though is expected to bounce back next year with research director Tarun Pathak predicting it to grow to 5.9%.