Nobody was expecting India to reach the number two spot in the world, in terms of mobile phone sales. But it has happened in less than a decade, thanks to the drastic policy changes by the government with clear focus on increasing the phone penetration.
The Indian market has been growing at over 40% year after year for the last five years, while the call rate per minute has also been crashing by over 20% year after year. Falling call rates, were also aided by excellent policy support by the government through reduced duties on handsets.
That propelled the sales to over 6 million per month in the last one year. Now India ranks as the second largest mobile market in the world, overtaking the dominant US market.
With US market not growing at all , and with India continuing to grow at over 30% a year, we can expect India to remain the number two player in the world, for another decade at least.
The India market potential is still huge, because the mobile penetration as on date is less than 20% , way below the US and China. And the huge young population,which is seeing massive growth in earnings, is expected to sustain the mobile market growth for another decade.