Mobile connectivity in emerging economies: Boon or Bane?

India currently accounts for more than 10% of the global smartphone market. However, smartphone ownership rates are the lowest in India among the 11 developing countries surveyed by Pew Research Center.

Further, while the country has over 500 million internet users, nearly half of Indian adults (47%) say they have a basic phone that cannot connect to the internet, according to country-specific findings drawn from the survey released on 8 March.

India, according to the survey, is also one of only two countries in which a majority of adults do not use one of the seven social media platforms or messaging services–Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, WhatsApp, Snapchat and Viber, plus the dating app Tinder–included in the survey that was conducted among 28,122 adults in 11 economically emerging countries from September 7 to December 7, 2018.