India will be among biggest players in global app market by 2016

GERMANY: Today’s leading smartphone app markets, the USA and the top five Western EU countries, will lose their dominant positions. The prerequisites of the Indian market to become one of the leading app markets are improving rapidly.

These finding are poart of the new Smartphone App Market Monitor by research2guidance.

There are various factors that have an impact on the size of the app business in a country. The four main drivers for this development are:

Dynamic of the overall economic wealth: Over the past two decades India has had an annual average GDP growth rate of 5.8 percent, making the country one of the top emerging economies today.

Furthermore, India’s GDP purchasing power parity (PPP) is ranked 3rd in the world by the most important institutions (e.g. the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the CIA World Factbook). The overall economic growth will drive the demand for apps that address customers with the help of the mobile channels.

Increase of average income: Today the monthly average salary in India amounts to only US$ 295, accounting for only 10 percent of the monthly average salary in both the US and Germany, and roughly 50 percent of the average Chinese monthly salary.

Additionally, according to the Human Development Index (HDI), 41.6 percent of the Indian population lives below $1.25 PPP per day. Projected growth rates of income are well above Western countries in the next few years. More and more employees will be able to afford a smartphone and thus drive India’s current smartphone share to 9 percent, overtaking Western countries’ figures.

High expected number of smartphone shipments:  India is currently ranked 7th in the world in terms of smartphone shipments, with a global market share of 2.9 percent. However, by 2016, the Indian market will become the third largest market for smartphone shipments (surpassing Brazil and the UK in the ranking) and will have an accompanying market share of 9.3 percent. This means, almost every tenth smartphone in the world will be shipped to the Indian market.

Active app developer community: India has one of the largest app developer communities that concentrate on offshore development today. With the growth of the domestic app market (user base and download number), more and more individuals will concentrate on developing apps for the Indian market creating more apps and download opportunities.

Those drivers will help to make India one of the leading app markets worldwide in only three years, providing business opportunities not only for domestic players.