Indians spend 7.3 hours on OTT, social media, messaging; more than Americans and Chinese

According to a recent report by Redseer Strategy Consultants, at approximately 7.3 hours per day screen time, Indians are using their smartphones for various purposes, but mostly for online messaging, social media, YouTube streaming, OTT content and short form video. The report noted that the majority of digital consumers come from tier 2 cities.

On the other hand, Americans spend 7.1 hours a day on their smartphones, while Chinese users' average screen time comes around 5.3 hours every day. Also, Redseer's report mentions that Thailand users spend most chunk of their time online at an average of 9.1 hours a day.

The growing online presence of Indians on a daily basis is mainly due to the country's cheaper data costs and affordable smartphones (starting at $60, roughly around Rs 5,000), the report highlighted, adding that this sets the stage for high digital opportunities for consumer internet players.

Interestingly, India's mobile data pricing per GB of usage is among the lowest in the world. With Prime Minister Narendra Modi's 'Digital India' push for affordable data pricing across telecom majors, the country's data cost per GB is just above Israel's. Redseer's report mentions that as of July 2022, India's mobile data pricing per GB stood at $0.17 (roughly Rs 140) as against China's $0.41 and US' $5.62.

Due to the above factors, Redseer report added that at 780 million, India is home to the second-largest internet user base in the world, which is more than two times of the US population.

It also noted that with the accelerated growth of internet and smartphone adoption, "India is expected to surpass 1 billion internet users by 2030."