Most Popular Programming Languages of 2013

Social Media and Brand Management in india

Social Media has now become part of everyday life for a majority of online Indians. According to a study on social media usage by The Nielsen Company conducted in collaboration with AbsolutData, nearly 30 million Indians who are online are members of social networking sites and about two-thirds of them spend time on these social networking sites daily. More importantly, Indians spend more time on social media than they do using personal email. According to the study, an equal number spend up to an hour on social networking and email. However while just 8 percent spend between an hour and three hours on personal email, 20 percent spend the same time on social media sites.

“Social media is now ingrained in the way tech savvy Indians live their lives. With its ability to play multiple roles in an individual’s life by enabling shared experiences, creating linkages between communities and satisfying the need to be networked, its role in creating a deeper engagement is a boon to marketing," said Adrian Terron, Vice President of Global Communications and Marketing for Nielsen.
“The social web appears to have gone beyond supplementing communication. Online Indians today are using social media to facilitate activities that range from leisure like entertainment, improving their livelihood through job searches and researching prospective partners,” said Suhale Kapoor, EVP, AbsolutData.
What Social Growth Means for Brands in India
Social media is also gathering momentum rapidly. Based on the current rate of growth and the intention of online Indians to participate in social media, the study estimates that over the next six months 45,000 online Indians intend to join social networking sites each day.
When asked about the awareness of brands on social media, a fourth of online Indians were able to recall brands using social media. Of those consumers who are on social networking sites, a small but growing number claim to be following brands on these platforms.
“This indicates that no single brand ‘owns’ the social media space and that the opportunity to become a ‘social’ brand is overwhelming. Given that, having a social media presence connotes ‘innovation’ ‘customer friendliness’ and a sense of 'cool,' brands should only ignore this aspect at their own peril,” continued Terron.

Brand engagement through social media on the rise
Nearly 40 million Indians are using online reviews to inform purchase decisions – 67 percent of Indians who are on the web use online reviews to help them make purchases. As personal opinion gains currency on the social web, online users are seeking various outlets to express themselves, be it blogs or social media sites.
Increasingly, Indians also want brands to communicate with them using social media. 60 percent Indians who are social media users are open to being approached by brands indicating that social media has the ability to change the dynamic between brands and consumers who are typically time-starved and may consider traditional forms of advertising obtrusive and undesirable.
This emerging behavior points to the fact that brands need to deliver on consumer expectations much more than ever before, in a world where consumer opinion and brand advocacy, or criticism propagates through social networks much faster than ever before.

 

Source: http://www.nielsen.com/us/en/newswire/2011/indians-now-spend-more-time-on-social-media-sites-than-on-personal-email.html

Social Networking using SmartPhones in India

Social Networking is one of the top activities for smartphone users in India, fueled by the simultaneous growth of social media and smartphone adoption in the country. Social networking apps offer seamless integration with other phone functions enabling instant photo sharing, updates, and website links and more.
Nielsen Informate analysis of social networking usage trends for Android smartphone users in India uncovered the following insights.

1. Social Networking properties (apps/sites) are the most accessed, second only to search
2. Facebook leads the list, Google+ comes in second
3. One in three Facebook users does not use any other Social Networking property
4. The Facebook app is very sticky with an average user logging in 17 days a month
5. While Facebook is used throughout the day, engagement levels peak late night

A whopping 93% of Android smartphone users in India use social networking on their smartphones.

Facebook is the dominant Social Networking property with a reach that’s more than 5 times higher than its nearest competitor - Google+.

A sign of Facebook’s domination is that one in three Facebook users doesn’t use any other Social Networking property on the smartphone.

The more preferred way to access Facebook is through the app. Integration with other Social Networking properties and with phone features (eg., camera, browser) make the app a convenient one stop solution.

A high share of Facebook users access the app throughout the day. The engagement levels, however, peak late at night.

 

 Source:  http://www.nielsen.com/us/en/newswire/2012/smart-and-social-android-phones-in-india.html

Men do Web Browsing, Women do Texting with their SmartPhones

Mobile Insights notes that in India, women spend the same amount of time on their smartphones as compared to men. However, there are sharp contrasts in how they use their phones.

• Men spend 50 percent more time browsing the web on their smartphones than women.
• Women spend 3 hours more on calls every month as compared to men.
• Women spend 4 times the amount of time men spend on Instant Messaging (Chat) applications.
• Men experiment more with apps – they install, on an average, 16 applications in a month compared to just 11 by women.

Calls & Messaging

Women spend nearly 20 hours a month on calls and messaging which is almost 33 percent more than time spent by men on the same activity. Also, incoming and outgoing calls both last longer among women.

Web Browsing

Men spend 50 percent more time browsing on their smartphones than women. The average number of websites visited by men is 20 in a month compared to just 14 among women. However, women prefer social sites more than men as 43 percent of web pages visited by women are social networking sites, compared to just 32 percent for men.

Online Applications

Women use online apps substantially higher compared to men, driven mainly by chat apps such as WhatsApp Messenger (which women use three times as much as men), Google Talk and Nimbuzz. Men however, don't mind asking for directions on their smartphones, accessing the Google Maps app more than women (45% vs 32%). Men also install more apps than women - 16 applications in a month compared to just 11 by women. For both men and women around 20 percent of all apps installed are online apps.

Source :  http://www.nielsen.com/us/en/newswire/2012/smart-and-social-android-phones-in-india.html

Indian Youth Prefer Android. 50% users with Active Data connection

The Indian Smartphone User study was conducted in September and October 2012 across 46 cities in India. Nielsen Informate Mobile Insights polled more than 10,000 smartphone owners as part of this study.

 

Indian Smartphone users prefer Android over other operating systems, which is primarily because of the push Android has received from local brands.

Smartphone use in India is quickly becoming the dominant way many of the country’s 900 million mobile phone users stay connected. In fact, the country may have as many as 40 million of these devices in use by early this year. The dramatic growth is driven by a desire among users to stay connected and have instant access to social networking sites—a global trend that represents an exponential growth opportunity in developing countries.

The Indian Smartphone User study found that 93 percent of smartphone users own only one handset, making it their single source of infotainment on the go. The study also found that smartphone users in India overwhelmingly prefer mobile devices that operate on the Android operating system, which highlights Indian consumers’ desire for a platform that is open and available across multiple brands and prices. While Symbian usage is also high in India, Windows, BlackBerry and iOS devices each only have single-digit market shares.

 
 This study by Nielsen finds that 93% of smartphone users own only one handset and while only 3 percent of respondents who participated in the study in the last quarter of 2012 said they owned a tablet, 11 percent said they intended to purchase one.
  
Tablet Owners:
Consumer interest in tablets is also on the rise. While only 3 percent of respondents who participated in the study in the last quarter of 2012 said they owned a tablet, 11 percent said they intended to purchase one. Consumers are also spending notably more time on their tablets than their Android smartphones—about an hour more.

 

Users Prefer Paying for Game, Chat and Music Apps:

 

 voice and text communication via smartphone in India is declining. In fact, voice calls and texting accounted for only 25 percent of smartphone usage; multimedia, games, apps and Internet browsing made up the rest. Among apps, consumers prefer games, particularly with respect to paid apps. Games were the most popular category among paid apps, with nearly three out of five users (58%) paying for games. Other popular paid app categories among smartphone users include chat and instant messaging (53%) and streaming music (45%).




 

50% have Mobile Internet Access

Mobile Internet connectivity and smartphone usage go hand in hand, but only half of the smartphone users polled have active data access. While this percentage may be significantly higher than the mobile data penetration for feature phone users, it indicates that millions of smartphone users still don’t have access to mobile Internet connectivity.
It is interesting to note that the youth are quick to adopt data connectivity on their smartphones, as more than
half of all data users are younger than 25.

 

 Source: http://www.nielsen.com/us/en/newswire/2013/smartphones-keep-users-in-india-plugged-in.html