India's telecom subscriber base dipped to 1.175 billion at the end of January with smaller operators losing bulk of their customers, as per monthly Trai report released on Friday.
"The number of telephone subscribers in India declined from 1,190.67 million at the end of December 2017 to 1,175.01 million at the end of January 2018, thereby showing a monthly decline rate of 1.32 per cent," the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India said.
The mobile subscriber base declined to 1.15 billion at the end of January 2018 from 1.167 billion at the end of December 2017, down 1.33 per cent.
Large telecom operators jointly added over 12.6 million new customers in January, of which 8.3 millions were added by Reliance Jio alone. The net addition of Bharti Airtel was over 1.5 million. It was followed by Vodafone which added 1.28 million new customers, Idea Cellular 1.144 million and BSNL 3,96,000 new customers.
Meanwhile,India will soon have more than 10 million people using Apple iPhones, making it the eleventh smartphone brand to cross that mark, a report by CyberMedia Research said on Friday.
It’s a remarkable accomplishment for Apple “in a price-sensitive market like India where 56% of the smartphones sold are still sub Rs 10,000”, CyberMedia Research analyst Faisal Kawoosa said in a note.
Overall though, Apple’s number pales in comparison with those of new smartphone market leader, Xiaomi, which had 28 million users as of 2017 end, and No. 2 Samsung, which has over 120 million smartphone users.