In November 2016, Rajiv Bhansal, the Joint Secretary of the Department of Electronics and Information Technology gave a keynote address at Mobile Sparks's fifth edition in Delhi. His keynote address greatly focused on his vision on Digital India and his belief that everyone who is a part of the Indian mobile ecosystem have a great future ahead of them. Here are the takeaways about the Indian Mobile Ecosystem as shared by Rajiv Bhansal: The landscape of digital India is changing: Various programmes such as Digital India, India Stack, Startup India etc. are moving beyond recognition. In addition to this, entrepreneurs could find opportunities in the mobile space in fin tech, mobile app development, manufacturing and an Aadhar enabled space. Increase in the use of smartphones in the future: He stated that currently, out of the 1 billion mobile phones in the country, 30% constitute the use of smartphones. However, in the coming 3 to 4 years, the sale of smartphones in India will beat the sale of feature phones, making the smartphone to feature phone ratio – 70:30. Manufacturing smartphones in India, thereby increasing its penetration across the world: India is manufacturing and assembling 150 million smartphones each year and these phones are also being sold in Africa and the Middle East. In the next 3 years, we will manufacture 300 million smartphones which will help not only the use of smartphones but also the internet in India as well other countries. Mobile is the device of the future: Mobiles have evolved starting from desktops, laptops and tabs. This trend suggests that preference has been given to reduction in size and increase in power, capacity and speed. This trend also suggests that mobiles will be the only device that will continue in the future. Penetration of internet: In a county of over 1.2 billion people, there are approximately 450 million who have access to internet. Although this number seems small in comparison, it should be noted that 100 million connections are being added every year and this number is only said to increase in the near future. The growth of phone users increased from 100 million to 1,000 million the last decade and the growth of internet connections will see a similar trajectory. Indian Language penetration in mobile phones: A large segment of the Indian population does not speak English. Therefore, the penetration of internet in rural areas is also quite low. The challenge pertaining to the use of language in India is greater when compared to most other countries. This is because most other countries speak have around 6 to 7 spoken languages, however, India has 22 major languages alone and many dialects. Therefore, to overcome this challenge, starting from July 2017, all mobile phones manufactured in India will support 3 languages for text inputs namely English, Hindi and 1 local language. They will also have readability options in 22 languages. Aadhar Revolution: Currently, around 98% to 99% of the target population of the country have Aadhar numbers and in the near future, India will see approximately 700 to 800 million users of internet out of which 500 million will use internet through smartphones. Combining the power of Aadhar and smartphones in the country, we will see a lot of innovators and problem solvers in the future. UPI (Unified Payment Interface): The evolution of the banking system started with money lenders. It transitioned into post banks and then into ATMs, credit cards, internet banking and currently, mobile banking. UPI will combine all these steps into a single step and give mobile transaction access even to those who do not have bank accounts. In his keynote address he also talked about a 20 hour contact programme on digital literacy wherein Indian citizens will receive basic training on the use of smartphones, navigation and searching for content. A programme that will be taught in many local languages.
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