Recent developments for mobile screens have fundamentally impacted traditional media and entertainment within the Indian market, gradually changing viewing habits of people. With increasing popularity of smart devices and acceleration of network speeds, Indian users are gradually shifting from traditional media to digital media for content consumption.
The United States and China are dominants of the international entertainment industry and value the Indian market, so both countries tend to gain shares for their potential growth within the market. In the current entertainment market in India, companies from the United States mainly focus on production and dissemination of long videos, while companies from China hold an advantage on the news and short videos segment.
This report was jointly issued by Cheetah Lab and UC Media Lab from UCWeb, Alibaba Digital Media and Entertainment Group. With the exclusive big data from both parties, it looks to throw light on consumption habits of Indian mobile users, along with the status quo and trends of the mobile entertainment industry.
Note: The range of mobile entertainment for this report includes: Long videos, Short videos, Sports, News, and other products and contents excluding games.
1. Entertainment is the largest category in consumption of mobile content, and the overall proportion of entertainment users has seen a rise.
According to the total rate of content consumption in UC News Feed Platform, entertainment is the largest category in mobile content consumption for Indian users, followed by Sports and Lifestyle.
According to Cheetah Data, Indian smartphone users spend
1.1 hours
on an average on content related to entertainment every day.
In a range of categories for Apps in India,
active penetration rate of Video Apps is second only to Tools and Communication categories, higher than Social Media Apps.
Relatively speaking, Indian users prefer to consume online entertainment products than users in China and in the United States.
As compared to previous year, penetration rate of Indian entertainment products among Indian smartphone users has increased, benefiting from the launch of Reliance Jio in 2016 and price competition of other network operators in India.
Price drop has brought significant contributions to online entertainment products that requires substantial traffic.
In the case of YouTube, India has become YouTube's fastest growing market over the years, with
225 million Indian monthly active users
on mobile devices alone.
From the content form on UC News Feed Platform, articles（texts and images）are the majority, accounting for
88.26%;
videos accounting for
11.24%,
and the photo albums accounting for just
0.5%.
Articles are still the main form of creation for Indian content producers.
In view of consumption, articles（texts and images） are still an important aspect in in-app consumption of UC, with overall consumption accounting for
83.95%;
and video consumption for
16.41%.
2. Young men under the age of 30 are the main consumers of entertainment products
According to Cheetah Data, gender ratio of Indian entertainment users is identical to that of Indian Internet users, where men account for the majority with a ratio of
67.89%.
And
80.36%
of all entertainment users are young people under the age of 30.
3. Post-dinner and before bed as peak consumption time for entertainment users
According to Cheetah Data, peak hours for Indian entertainment users are
from 6 to 10 pm.
4. The rise in proportion of Indian entertainment users using large-screen mobile phones
In emerging mobile phone markets such as India and Nigeria, large-screen mobile phones are more popular among users. According to Cheetah Data, proportion of Indian entertainment products users using mobile phone with screens of 5 inches or above has increased significantly from January 2018 to September 2018, from which majority of users own a 5.5-inch mobile phone with
26.39%.
People with mobile phones of 5.2 inches has increased from
12.67%
to
14.32%.
5. Majority of consumers in the entertainment industry speak Hindi
With respect to consumers of entertainment industry,
Hindi remains the main language, accounting for 69.2% of content;
English content accounting only for 6.37%; and the remaining 24.61% are users of vernacular languages.
6. Shah Rukh Khan is the most popular male celebrity among Indian users followed by Ranbir Kapoor and Akshay Kumar
According to consumption data provided by UC News Feed Platform, King Khan ranks No. 1 on the male celebrity ranking, followed by Ranbir Kapoor, Akshay Kumar and Ranveer Singh. The well-recognized Aamir Khan has ranked 5th in the popularity list. Priyanka Chopra, who recently got engaged to Nick Jonas, ranks first in the female celebrity popularity list.
In India, more and more people are “isolating” from Television to mobile phones embracing online content. According to statistics, number of online video viewers in India has reached up to 250 million in 2017 alone, with a year-on-year increase of 64%. It is estimated that by 2020,
72% of mobile phone traffic consumption by Indian digital consumers will be used to watch online videos.
According to data from the survey company ComScore, top 15 new media have produced a total of 14 billion minutes of video in April 2017 alone.
Another research as conducted by Media Partners Asia shows that India's online video market is worth over $700 million and is expected to reach a market size of $2.4 billion by 2023.
At present, leading enterprises from China and the United States are optimistic towards the prospects of online video development in India.
1.Long videos: domination of local films, Amazon, Netflix works on content production
Movies and TV shows account for the majority of content consumption in long videos.
Digitalization has played an important role in the development of Indian film industry. A relevant data analysis illustrates that the Indian film industry will develop at a speed rate of 11.9% by 2020, and there will be more than 3,000 screens all over cinemas in India by 2019. This also provides rich content for online video products.
