The number of smartphone users in India was estimated to reach over one billion in 2023. It was estimated by 2040, the number of smartphone users in India will reach 1.55 billion.

Smartphone users in India – additional information

The number of smartphone users worldwide is projected to amount to nearly 7.7 billion by 2027. It is expected that, by 2022, more than two third of the total global population will use a smartphone. Due to China’s rapid growth, the country has become a distant leader in the smartphone market, leaving the U.S., which previously held the top position, far behind. Smartphone users in China already accounted for 72 percent of the country’s population in 2022. By 2028, more than 83 percent of the population in China is projected to use a smartphone. For 2022, the number of smartphone users in China amounted to nearly 1.04 billion.

India, the second most populous country in the world, passed the United States in number of smartphone users in 2017. Around 223 million people in the U.S. use a smartphone by 2017, compared to 340 million in India. Despite this increase in volume, the U.S. still has a higher smartphone penetration rate than India. The smartphone penetration rate in India reached close to 71 percent by 2023, a penetration rate that the U.S. already reached in 2019. Samsung was the leading smartphone vendor in India in 2022, followed by Xiaomi and Vivo.

In 2024, around seven percent of people in India purchases smartphone online and was estimated to reach 8.3 percent in 2029. In 2022, the volume of smartphone shipments across India was around 146 million. And the most popular brand at the end of 2023 was Samsung.

In 2023, Samsung had the highest share in the smartphone shipments volume across India at approximately 17 percent. In a close competition, Vivo held the second spot with an 15.2 percent market share. The same year, the total number of smartphone sold in India reached 164 million units.

The penetration rate of mobile phones in India was about 76.6 percent in financial year 2022. This was estimated to significantly increase to over 86 percent in financial year 2026 in the country.

After being squeezed by Xiaomi over the past few years, Samsung once again became the leading smartphone brand in India. Samsung led the market in three out of the four quarters of 2023. However, in the second quarter of 2024, Xiaomi and Vivo both surpassed Samsung in terms of market share, with 18 percent respectively. Aside from Samsung, the other four top smartphone brands are all by Chinese manufacturers. Smartphone market share in India The number of smartphone users in India, the second most populous country in the world, was on the rise. In 2023, there were about 1.01 billion smartphone users in the country. This figure was forecasted to jump to nearly 1.14 billion by 2025. By 2025, the share of the population in India that used a smartphone was predicted to rise to 78.4 percent. This growth can also be observed in the volume of smartphone shipments in India. The number of smartphone shipments in India increased from four million units in the second quarter of 2012 to 34 million units in the first quarter of 2024. Major players South Korean giant Samsung, a leader in the global smartphone market, had been the top smartphone vendor in India since early 2013, when the company held about 30 percent of the market share, until the end of 2017. But its position has been challenged by the Chinese smartphone manufacturer Xiaomi. Since its founding in 2010, Xiaomi has quickly risen to the top of China's crowded technology market and is now one of the leading consumer electronics manufacturers globally. The company specializes primarily in smartphones, but is also active in other markets.

In 2023, more than two-thirds of the smartphones sold in India were under 200 U.S. dollars. During the same period, smartphones from the super-premium segment of 800 dollars and more accounted for seven percent of the market. The iPhone led the super-premium segment with 68 percent of shipments.

In a survey conducted in 2023, about 80 percent of respondents with a higher level of education in India owned a smartphone. By comparison, only one-third of respondents with less education owned a smartphone.

How many smartphone mobile network subscriptions are active worldwide? The number of smartphone mobile network subscriptions worldwide reached almost seven billion in 2023, and is forecast to exceed 7.7 billion by 2028. China, India, and the United States are the countries with the highest number of smartphone mobile network subscriptions. Smartphone unit sales levelling off The smartphone market still has high growth potential, with the smartphone penetration rate remaining lower than 70 percent in many highly populated markets, in particular China and India. Global smartphone revenue reached 481 billion U.S. dollars in 2021, but was expected to have fallen to 463 billion in 2022. Despite stagnating sales, the increasing average selling price of smartphones is expected to support the market over the coming years. Leading smartphone vendors The leading smartphone vendors today are Samsung and Apple. These technology companies account for about half of all smartphone shipments worldwide.

The average selling price of smartphones in India was around 255 U.S. dollars in 2023. It surpassed the previous highest average selling price of 254 U.S. dollars in 2011. The growth in the average selling price was driven by price increases and bigger 5G contribution.

According to a survey conducted in rural India in 2023, approximately 77 percent of respondents stated that children used mobile phones to play games. Meanwhile, over 56 percent of respondents opined children used smartphones to download and watch movies during the recorded period.

China is leading the ranking by number of smartphone users , recording 859.38 million users. Following closely behind is India with 700.58 million users, while Seychelles is trailing the ranking with 0.05 million users, resulting in a difference of 859.33 million users to the ranking leader, China. Smartphone users here are limited to internet users of any age using a smartphone. The shown figures have been derived from survey data that has been processed to estimate missing demographics.The shown data are an excerpt of Statista's Key Market Indicators (KMI). The KMI are a collection of primary and secondary indicators on the macro-economic, demographic and technological environment in up to 150 countries and regions worldwide. All indicators are sourced from international and national statistical offices, trade associations and the trade press and they are processed to generate comparable data sets (see supplementary notes under details for more information).

A survey conducted in India in 2023 found that ** percent of the male adult population had a phone, while only ** percent of the female population did. Among which, the biggest gap was between male and female smartphone owners: while ** percent of Indian adult men had smartphones, only ** percent of Indian adult women did.

India’s digital journey is one of exuberance. The country had the world’s second-largest internet population at over 1.2 billion users in 2023. Of these, 1.05 billion users accessed the internet via their mobile phones. Estimates suggest that this figure would reach over 1.2 billion by 2050.

The path towards digital India

Mobile internet has been such a positive development in the country’s digital progress, that in 2019, over 73 percent of India’s total web traffic coming from mobile phones. But how did this come to be? Two main factors point to the sudden spike in mobile internet penetration in the south Asian country. Firstly, the increased availability of cheap smartphones since 2010 had created a fertile ground for digital adoption and literacy. Along with this, the Indian government understood the vitality of investments in its telecommunications sector and further opened the market with new telecom spectrum licenses.

Reliance Jio - the market disruptor

With this backdrop, in September 2016, Reliance Jio entered the Indian market, promising customers with cheap 4G, high speed data plans along with free voice calling. Within six months of its launch, the company had attracted over a 100 million customers and by the end of 2019, it had the highest wireless telecom subscriber base in India. Jio’s competitive pricing drove down the data pricing among other established telecom operators, leading to a cumulative growth in mobile internet accessibility as well as affordability.

According to a survey conducted by the Mobile Ecosystem Forum from November to December 2019, the highest penetration rate among smartphone users was in the age group of 16 to 24 years, with 37 percent. This was followed by the users between 24 and 35 years old. Older Indians surveyed had a lower penetration rate for smartphone usage.

 Baby boomers to millennials – smartphone addiction

Smartphones, once a status symbol has now become a common product in the country due to disposable incomes, faster lifestyle, and the necessity to stay connected. Also, an open operating system and low data rates have fueled this growth. In India, increased availability of content across various genres, regional languages, and communicating over social media and different applications led to an increased usage of smartphones.

Smartphone pricing in the country

The Indian smartphone market was dominated those that cost below 20,000 Indian rupees. This was evident from the share of the leading smartphone models in the country. Even though Apple dominated mobile markets worldwide, India had a different story. Though iPhones led in the premium segment, its share in the overall smartphone market remained near negligible. The smartphone market in the country was saturated with high competition, forcing companies to work on wafer-thin margins. Around 30 major smartphone brands were vying for their spotlight in the Indian smartphone market.

The statistic shows the share of the population in the United States that uses a smartphone in the United States from 2018 to 2025. In 2025, 87.08 percent of the population in the United States is forecast to use a smartphone.

Smartphone user penetration - additional information
A smartphone can be defined as a mobile device that uses an identifiable operating system and has a more advanced technological capability than a basic mobile phone. The number of U.S mobile users who have a smartphone is set to more than triple between 2011 and 2017 to almost 80 percent of all mobile users. This means that the number of overall smartphone users is forecast to top 200 million by 2017.

The smartphone penetration rate of mobile users is similarly high in the United Kingdom, with over 80 percent expected to own a smart device by 2017. However the smartphone market is set to grow at a slower rate in China with just under half of mobile users forecast to own a smartphone in 2017. The percentage is even lower in India where 32 percent of mobile phone users are predicted to use a smartphone by 2017.

Android phones and iPhones remain the most popular choice for smartphones with the two respective Operating Systems holding of 90 percent of the market sales in the U.S. in 2013. This trend looks set to continue with two new competing smartphones on the market, the Samsung Galaxy Note 4 (Android) and the iPhone 6 (iOS), both unveiled in 2014.

In 2023, Android held a share of 95.17 percent of the mobile operating system market in India. This was followed by Apple's iOS, a distant second, with 3.98 percent market share. Android went from just above 10 percent in 2012 to more than 60 percent within four years. Mobile operating systems in India - additional information Android gained its dominant position in the mobile operating system market in India since 2015 when it first reached more than 50 percent of the market share. The Indian OS market has seen a rapid transformation since the beginning of 2012 when Symbian held over 65 percent of the market. In the following few years, the operating system, which was used in most Nokia smartphones, has seen its market share fall to nothing. Android’s dominance in the Indian smartphone industry is echoed in the global market where the operating system held over 70 percent of the smartphone market at the end of 2023. In the United States, however, more than half of the smartphone users had an iPhone as of March 2024. Android’s closest rival in the global operating system market is Apple’s iOS, which held over 24 percent of the market share of smartphone shipments as of the fourth quarter of 2023. However, as yet, Apple has not broken into the Indian market, although its market share has grown steadily since the start of 2012, it still remained just below four percent.

In January 2025, the Samsung Galaxy A16 5G was the best-selling smartphone on the Indian market with a share of 3.6 percent. This was followed by OPPO's A3x. With 2.6 percent, Apple is increasing popular in the country with iPhone 16. Android market India was the second-largest market for Android smartphones. And in 2024, more than 150 million smartphones were sold in the country and the number is likely to grow in the following years. Realme has a great potential for growth as it has been marketed as a youth-centric smartphone with great quality at an affordable price. Realme has plans to launch new lifestyle products other than just smartphones. As the country has rolled out 5G services by the end of 2022, companies have started offering their first 5G phones in India. Common activities on smartphones With affordable and cheap smartphones, India’s data consumption was the highest in the world. The data usage per smartphone was at an average of 29 GB per month, according to a report by Ericsson. Data was mainly used for video calls followed by scanning QR codes and using mobile payment apps that increased the mobile data traffic.

In 2024, the volume of smartphone shipments in India was about 151 million, up slightly from about 146 million the previous year. The year-on-year change rate was at four percent. 5G smartphone shipments reached 120 million in the same year. And the average selling price reached a new peak of 259 U.S. dollars. 5G in India Since October 2022, 5G services have been launched in India in 13 cities, including most of the major Indian cities such as Delhi, Mumbai, and Chennai. Reliance Jio, Bharti Airtel, Vodafone Idea, and Adani Data Networks won 5G licenses through auctions for a total of 1.5 trillion Indian rupees. Reliance Jio, the most popular telecom service provider in India with close to 40 percent market share, was also one of the first to offer 5G services. Popular smartphones in India The smartphone market in India is incredibly competitive. Some of the most popular smartphone brands in the country were from China, including Xiaomi, Vivo, and Oppo. The market was dominated by medium to lower-priced phones, and models from the premium price category had a hard time increasing their market share. But recently, Apple’s iPhone started to see increased popularity among urban elites, and in 2023, more than 10 million units of iPhones were sold in India.

In 2020, 53 percent of India's total population accessed the internet from their mobile phones. This was expected to grow to 96 percent by 2040, indicating a significant rise in the country's mobile internet user base.

"Social media apps" and "Internet browser" are the top two answers among Indian consumers in our survey on the subject of "Most used smartphone apps by type".Find this and more survey data on most used smartphone apps by type in our Consumer Insights tool. Filter by countless demographics, drill down to your own, hand-tailored target audience, and compare results across countries worldwide.