Young Indians prefer mobile for news and entertainment

Young Indian consumers are preferring mobile devices over traditional media like television and radio for information, current affairs as well as source of entertainment and this trend is poised to surge in the coming years, a private telecom operator said here Wednesday.

According to mobile service provider Tata Docomo, which recently conducted a research on mobility trends, the Internet represented the preferred mode for both news and entertainment accounting for 40 per cent and 45 per cent of the space.

This is dominated by mobile access, however, with 33 per cent of millennials (new generation consumers) consulting mobile in the first instance for news (compared to just 7 per cent through a fixed connection), and 36 per cent using the same platform to source entertainment and leisure information (just 9 per cent for fixed connections).

"This study reveals the declining relevance of traditional information platforms as primary information sources, particularly with respect to entertainment and leisure subjects where nearly a third of respondents turn directly to social media (Facebook, Twitter etc.) in the first instance," said the company's head of digital business Praveen Gupta.

The study further said the shift towards mobile content is already underway in India.

"63 per cent of millennial mobile users are as comfortable with mobile advertising as they are with TV or online advertising; in fact only 3.1 per cent of Indian millennials consider brands that advertise on TV as being modern, compared to more than twice that number who associate smartphone advertisers with the same quality," the study said.