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.

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.

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.

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.

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).

With fast and cheap mobile data plans and the largest population in the world, India has a lot to offer in the smartphone industry. Most of the Indian people use smartphones to connect to the internet, making it a huge market for many smartphone brands. Around 46 million smartphone units were shipped across India in the third quarter of 2024. Over the presented period, a general growth trend could be observed. Smartphone users in India The Indian smartphone user base has a lot of potential to grow since many people still do not have internet subscription. However, the initiative by the central government to digitize the economy and the availability of cheap internet plans by private sector firms such as Reliance Jio, has resulted in a significant increase. The smartphone user base in India is predicted to cross 75 percent by 2025. The market of smartphones in India The Indian smartphone market is filled with many brands. Samsung, the global giant in electronics from South Korea, accounted for around 17 percent of the shipment share of smartphones across India in 2023. In July 2023, Realme C53 was the best-selling smartphone in the country with four percent of the total market share.

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 pan-India survey conducted in 2024, on smartphones, close to 16 percent of the respondents stated that they owned a smartphone from Samsung. This was closely followed by Vivo, with about 15.7 percent market share. Samsung had a share of over 19 percent in the total smartphone shipments across the globe.

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.

The statistic shows the total number of mobile phone users worldwide from 2015 to 2020. In 2019 the number of mobile phone users is forecast to reach 4.68 billion.

Mobile phone users worldwide - additional information

The number of mobile phone users in the world is expected to pass the five billion mark by 2019. In 2016, an estimated 62.9 percent of the population worldwide already owned a mobile phone. The mobile phone penetration is forecasted to continue to grow, rounding up to 67 percent by 2019. China was predicted to have just over 1.4 billion mobile connections in 2017, while India was forecast to reach over one billion. By 2019, China is expected to reach almost 1.5 billion mobile connections and India almost 1.1 billion.

Most of the mobile market growth can be attributed to the increasing popularity of smartphones. By 2014, around 38 percent of all mobile users were smartphone users. By 2018, this number is expected to reach over 50 percent. The number of smartphone users worldwide is expected to grow by one billion in a time span of five years, which means the number of smartphone users in the world is expected to reach 2.7 billion by 2019. Samsung and Apple are leading smartphone vendors, with about 18 percent of the market share each.

The number of smartphone users in India was forecast to continuously increase between 2024 and 2029 by in total 406.3 million users (+57.99 percent). After the nineteenth consecutive increasing year, the smartphone user base is estimated to reach 1.1 billion users and therefore a new peak in 2029. Notably, the number of smartphone users of was continuously increasing over the past years.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).Find more key insights for the number of smartphone users in countries like Pakistan and Nepal.

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.

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 financial year 2023, the total revenue of Samsung India has reached 989.2 billion Indian rupees. It was a 16 percent increase in comparison to the previous year. However, the company reported a 10 percent decline in profit. Most of the revenue came from the smartphone segment. Samsung is the leading company in various segments in India, including smartphones, TVs, refrigerators, etc.

The user base of mobile phones in India was about over one billion in financial year 2022. This was estimated to significantly increase to over 1.08 billion in financial year 2026 in the country.

A survey conducted in India in 2023 found that 78 percent of the male adult population had a phone, while only 64 percent of the female population did. Among which, the biggest gap was between male and female smartphone owners: while 51 percent of Indian adult men had smartphones, only 35 percent of Indian adult women did.

As of July 2024, around 15.2 percent of respondents in India, who owned a smartphone, planned to purchase an OnePlus device as an upgrade. It was followed by 14.7 percent of respondents planned to buy a Samsung smartphone. By 2025, the number of smartphone users in the south Asian nation was estimated to reach over 1.14 billion users.

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.

In 2022, smartphone vendors sold around 1.39 billion smartphones were sold worldwide, with this number forecast to drop to 1.34 billion in 2023.

Smartphone penetration rate still on the rise

Less than half of the world’s total population owned a smart device in 2016, but the smartphone penetration rate has continued climbing, reaching 78.05 percent in 2020. By 2025, it is forecast that almost 87 percent of all mobile users in the United States will own a smartphone, an increase from the 27 percent of mobile users in 2010.

Smartphone end user sales

In the United States alone, sales of smartphones were projected to be worth around 73 billion U.S. dollars in 2021, an increase from 18 billion dollars in 2010. Global sales of smartphones are expected to increase from 2020 to 2021 in every major region, as the market starts to recover from the initial impact of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.

In 2023, India had over 1.2 billion internet users across the country. This figure was projected to grow to over 1.6 billion users by 2050, indicating a big market potential in internet services for the South Asian country. In fact, India was ranked as the second largest online market worldwide in 2022, second only to China. The number of internet users was estimated to increase in both urban as well as rural regions, indicating a dynamic growth in access to internet.

Mobile connectivity

Of the total internet users in the country, a majority of the people access the internet via their mobile phones. There were nearly the same amount of smartphone users as internet users across the country. Cheap availability of mobile data, a growing smartphone user base in the country along with the utility value of smartphones compared to desktops and tablets are some of the factors contributing to the mobile heavy internet access in India.

Growth is on the cards

Despite the large number of internet users in the country, the internet penetration levels took longer to catch up equally. At the same time, the number of women who have access to internet is much lower than men in the country, and the bias is even more evident in rural India. Similarly, internet usage is lower among older adults in the country due to internet literacy and technological know-how. By encouraging internet accessibility among marginalized groups including women, older people and rural inhabitants in the country, India’s digital footprint has significant headroom to grow.