Internet usage in India is fast becoming second nature for the modern populace. By the time you’d have finished reading this sentence, another fifteen to twenty new users would have joined the flock – as indicates the latest report of IAMAI and Kantar IMRB. The report revealed that internet users by the end of June could be as high as 465 million, up from 432 million during December-end last year. And these new users are sprouting up every second, gradually increasing the size of the burgeoning digital market.

If you own a digital business, then this fact becomes quite evident and yet, all the more alluring. You are obviously aware that the internet opens a wider market for your business and increases sales significantly, so much so that online sales can outnumber the sales made through a regular brick-and-mortar store. The ongoing digital revolution is only putting you in a better position to seize a bigger pie of the over all benefits. But can you further augment your sales and better leverage the massive digital opportunity that is up for grabs? With about 900 million people still waiting to join the digital realm, you surely can, but staying limited to a single digital channel is clearly not an option.

Smartphone – The Veritable Game Changer
The fillip that internet usage is receiving in our country is through increased smartphone adoption. Smartphones have not only initiated a large chunk of new users to the internet, but have also enabled them to seamlessly connect to it with a simple touch of a button, and as they are on-the-go. What further illustrates the increasing dominance of smartphones is some market facts. An estimated 90 billion mobile applications were downloaded on Android and iOS platforms across the globe in 2016. And a sizeable portion of these downloads came from our country. Indians downloaded around six billion applications during last year, signalling a remarkable 71 percent y-o-y growth with India clocking the highest downloads on Google Play store across the globe.

However, this development is a part of a constant and larger market trend. India has recently become the second-largest smartphone market, surpassing the U.S. and standing second merely to China. Further, it was revealed in a research report titled‘ India as a Mobile-first Nation – Opportunities and Challenges’ that the average usage time of mobile internet users in India has gone up by 94 percent, only during the last two years. The same report also indicated that out of

the users that dominantly used both computers and mobile for internet, many had shifted at least one of their online activities completely to their mobile. This highlights the gradually increasing demand for smartphones and, along with it, smartphone-based applications in India.

Smartphones have not only initiated a large chunk of new users to the internet, but have also enabled them to seamlessly connect to it with a simple touch of a button, on-the-go

Smartphone Apps – The Way Forward
Consider this – today, a smartphone is a television, a high-definition camera, a computer,a remote control, an alarm clock, a calculator,a grocery shop, a library, a gaming console, a bank, and a personal assistant, apart from being a phone, of course. And the credit largely goes to numerous smartphone-based applications that make these things possible. The ever-increasing dependence of users on their smartphone apps is what is further fuelling the app demand. This also makes clear the enormous app downloads within the country, even when a larger segment of the population is yet to join the digital realm.

There’s a paradigm shift in user behaviour. The aforementioned report indicated that 93 percent of total time on a smartphone device is spent on mobile applications. The reason can primarily be attributed to better engagement offered to the user through smartphone-based mobile apps. Such applications have an intuitive interface and enable a user to seamlessly perform a gamut of operations. While, another factor that affects a user is that websites involve high loading time, an issue resolved by smartphone apps by storing critical data on the device in advance. Moreover, mobile applications are customised according to the specific device during installation. This ensures that the application performs its functions flawlessly on an array of devices. On the other hand, a website – which does not involve such device-specific customisation – can offer a desirable result on a device, while giving poor user experience on the other.

Never theless, smartphone applications require high capital investment and significant technical prowess to help obtain the desirable result. This is what limits a larger cluster of businesses from availing the upsides of a business-centric mobile application. But this problem is simultaneously being countered by integrated customised app platforms. Such DIY (do-it-yourself) platforms enable business owners and working professionals to create their own intuitive and highly engaging business apps through simple clicks, drags, and drops through easy-to-use solutions extended by them. It enables them to design the app precisely the way that they want it to be, and without writing a single line of code. Some market players even extend these in-demand state-of-the-art technological solutions at a very cost-effective rate.

However, what you should also keep in perspective is the fact that the new internet users now coming on board largely hail from non-urban areas, and inherently do not use mainstream languages such as English, and even Hindi to an extent. Tech giant Google has unveiled that every nine out of ten internet users coming online uses Indian languages, with the highest adoption from regional languages. This market development should be taken into consideration before designing an app for your own digital business. Opt for a platform that enables you to create an app in regional languages to best leverage this digital opportunity.

There is no overstating the fact that the digital market is very dynamic. It requires agility in approach while making prudent business decisions which give long-term benefits. Since the market clearly hints towards the growing influence of mobile applications, you can greatly enhance your competence and grab the biggest pie of this burgeoning market by following the trail.