Smartphone Usage Jumps 12% During Lockdown: Report

The government has announced a nationwide lockdown in the country to control the spread of COVID- 19. This is the tenth day of the lockdown, and almost all people are sitting at home. Now, it has been reported that the consumption of smartphones services has been increased by 12 percent.

According to the report by BARC India and Nielsen, smartphone users are spending more than three hours on their handsets. The report claims that people are spending 26.4 hours per week on smartphones.

"While the increase in time spent is almost the same in metros (11 percent), mini-metros (15 percent) and tier-II cities (12 percent), tier I cities witnessed an 8 percent increase. Among the different age groups, the 35-44-year-olds have shown a maximum increase of 18 percent, followed by 15-24-year-olds (12 percent) and 25-34-year-olds (9 percent)," the report said.

Moreover, a joint report suggested that people are spending time on videos and social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Whatapp, Messenger, and Telegram. It also said that so far only a five percent increase in call time has been reported.

It is worth noting that the usages of both gaming and short video platforms have been increased to 26 percent and 11 percent, respectively. Lastly, it states that the users are spending 191 minutes on gaming and 236 minutes on streaming the videos.

Indian Smartphone Users Are Spending Less Time On Wi-Fi

Meanwhile, Opensignal said that Wi-Fi services have been decreased to 9.8 percent from 10.8 percent. "In contrast to many other countries, Opensignal did not detect a statistically significant week-on-week increase in the percentage of time Indian smartphone users have spent on Wifi," the firm said in a report.

On the other hand, the Economic Times reported that the demand for dongles and routers has been increased by 50 to 60 percent in India. Ever since, the lockdown has been announced.