The new government led by Dr. Manmohan Singh may not be able to pull 30% of the billion plus Indians above the poverty line but he could certainly offer a billion mobile connections to Indians by 2014, according to the forecasts by Department of Telecommunications.

Nokia emerged as the most preferred brand for mobile handsets, followed by Sony Ericsson, according to a survey conducted by CyberMedia’s consumer electronics journal, Living Digital, throwing light on the future of the Indian mobile telephony.

To understand this burgeoning telecom market and the user preferences, Living Digital, conducted an online survey of over 1000 mobile users across 150 Indian cities, and analyzed future purchase patterns, which handset manufacturers customers rely on and mobile usage patterns across the country.

About 40% of the respondents had Airtel as a service provider followed by 27% subscribers from Vodafone. Idea, Reliance, Aircel and Tata Indicom subscribers added up to 15% of the respondents. The public sector service providers MTNL and BSNL’s subscribers participating in the survey added up to 13%.

Nearly three fourths of the respondents were satisfied with their mobile service providers, while 19% were just about satisfied. The real issue was with 8% of the subscribers who were not so satisfied or not at all satisfied.

Handset Preferences
The survey revealed that more than half the respondents owned a Nokia handset followed by Sony Ericsson at a distant second with 16% respondents owning it. Motorola was at 7% followed by HTC at 5%, and Samsung, LG, and other brands like Apple, Blackberry, Asus, Spice, Fly, etc. made up rest of the pie.

More than one-third of the respondents were completely satisfied with their current mobile phones while one-fifth were not too happy with the current handsets, indicating that they may look for a change in the future.

Half the respondents said that they will buy a Nokia phone in the future as it provided good value for money. Only 8% of the respondents who already owned a Nokia mobile said that they were likely to switch to another brand.

Sony-Ericsson was the next brand for future purchase with great multimedia capabilities and value for money offer.

According to the survey, 85% of the respondents stressed on features and functionality to be extremely important, while only 42% felt that looks and styles were extremely important.

A majority of the respondents changed their mobile phone once every two years, while 28% changed once a year.

Almost half the respondents were willing to shell out between Rs10,000 – Rs 30,000 for a new handset. For another 11% of the respondents, price didn't matter as long as they found what they liked.

SMS Most Popular Mobile Application
SMS was one of the most popular mobile application with an overwhelming 92% respondents using it. Over half the respondents used their mobile phones for listening to music, taking photos, surfing the Internet from their mobiles, and playing games. Slightly less than half engaged in work related tasks like using the mobile phone to access the Internet from a laptop, checking emails, managing meetings, appointments and other work.

About 18% of respondents also used GPS or location based services and accessed social networking sites (Twitter, Facebook, and Orkut) on the phone. They also used it for making payments, searches, trying new software, reading eBooks, PDFs and MS Office files.

Service Provider Preferences
Most of the mobile users were apprehensive about changing their service providers as they would have to change their number too. About two-fifth of the respondents said that if they would change their current service provider if they were allowed to retain their current mobile number.

About the survey
The survey was conducted online and with over 1000 responses from 150 plus cities. Of these 67% of the respondents were from top ten cities, which include the five metros (Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai and Bangalore), and the next top five cities namely Ahmedabad, Gurgaon, Noida, Hyderabad and Pune. Most of the respondents were male; a good 13 % were females. About two-fifth were between 20-30 years, while 6% were 15-20 years. On the upper side, 32% were 30-40 years, another 15% were 40-50 and yet another 5% were 50+.

About Living Digital:
Living Digital is a Cybermedia monthly that covers latest lifestyle gadgets and products, and has all the info that one needs to go digital. Reviews by the technology experts make the choice simpler and easier. www.livingdigitalindia.com

About CyberMedia:
CyberMedia is South Asia's first and largest specialty media house, with fifteen publications (including BioSpectrum, Dare, Dataquest, PCQuest, Voice&Data, Global Services and Technology Review) in the information technology, telecom, consumer electronics, and biotech areas, and is a media value chain including Internet (www.ciol.com), events, and television. The group's media services include market research (IDC India), content management and multimedia.

For media queries, please contact:
Sanjiv Kataria
Strategic Communications and PR Counsel
+91 98100 48095
E-mail: 'Sanjiv dot Kataria at gmail dot com