Smart Phone Penetration in Pakistan

Smartphones have blown away world mobile market in recent years. According to Business recorder Smartphone usage has jumped 79% in the past year and around 450 million smart phones are expected to ship worldwide this year.

Smart Phone Penetration in Pakistan

Besides the worldwide popularity, smartphones are also becoming popular among the users in Pakistan. According to the PTA there are 105 million SIMs in operation in PAKISTAN and phone density is round 67% of the Pakistan’s population use mobile phones and percentage of Smartphone users is increasing day by day.

Due to the increasing popularity of smartphones, phone manufacturing companies now prefer to produce smart phones instead of normal handset for instance Q-mobile are focusing mainly on smartphones.

 INICIATIVES TAKEN FOR PENETRATION OF SMART PHONES:

Ufone and Zong have taken a good initiative to increase the popularity of the Android platform, by releasing an affordable series of handsets running the OS.

The cheapest of them, Ideas is available from both operators for a price of approximately PKR 10,500. Ufone further offers two more Android handsets, the Image and Verve.

Mobilink also released Blackberry Smartphones in the Pakistani market.

Smart phones are slowly becoming users’ center of attention because of the incentives given by the operators like U-FONE and WARID.

Number of smarphone users in Pakistani market according to Business recorder estimate around five to six million Smartphone users. A rather bullish estimate is castes by Ericsson Pakistan which anticipates some 50 million Smartphone users in Pakistan by 2016, accounting for 70 percent of operator revenues.

According to the chairman of PTA the number of internet users increased to 15 million in June 2011 and only 5 million are PC users. TELENOR is dominant player in internet services and for that sake many users are switching towards the android or smart phones.

 MANUFACTURING OF SMART PHONES IN PAKISTAN

According to the Daily times PTA is also making efforts in convincing Smartphone manufacturers to come in Pakistan which will not only benefit the economy of country and but Smartphone users as well.

In Connect ICT Forum Chairman PTA said:

[pull_quote_center]“Several memorandums of understanding (MoUs) have been signed recently, between local companies and Chinese manufacturers and chip designer Falcom for producing smart phones in Pakistan”[/pull_quote_center]

If Pakistan starts manufacturing smart phones, the prices of phones will decrease automatically and thus will be available to general public.  Illegal import of mobile phones will also diminish; in future Pakistan can also export smart phones in future with the assistance of china.

A high penetration of smart phones in Pakistan can go much beyond mobile entertainment, social networking, and business usage.