research-article

Moving Beyond Market Research: Demystifying Smartphone User Behavior in India

Authors:

Lakshmi Manasa Kalanadhabhatta,

Rahul Majethia,

Fahim KawsarAuthors Info & Claims

Proceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies, Volume 1, Issue 3

Article No.: 82, Pages 1 - 27

https://doi.org/10.1145/3130947

Published: 11 September 2017 Publication History

Abstract

Large-scale mobile data studies can reveal valuable insights into user behavior, which in turn can assist system designers to create better user experiences. After a careful review of existing mobile data literature, we found that there have been no large-scale studies to understand smartphone usage behavior in India -- the second-largest and fastest growing smartphone market in the world. With the goal of understanding various facets of smartphone usage in India, we conducted a mixed-method longitudinal data collection study through an Android app released on Google Play. Our app was installed by 215 users, and logged 11.9 million data points from them over a period of 8 months. We analyzed this rich dataset along the lines of four broad facets of smartphone behavior -- how users use different apps, interact with notihcations, react to different contexts, and charge their smartphones -- to paint a holistic picture of smartphone usage behavior of Indian users. This quantitative analysis was complemented by a survey with 55 users and semi-structured interviews with 26 users to deeply understand their smartphone usage behavior. While our first-of-its-kind study uncovered many interesting facts about Indian smartphone users, we also found striking differences in usage behavior compared to past studies in other geographical contexts. We observed that Indian users spend significant time with their smartphones after midnight, continuously check notifications without attending to them and are extremely conscious about their smartphones’ battery. Perhaps the most dramatic finding is the nature of mobile consumerism of Indian users as shown by our results. Taken together, these and the rest of our findings demonstrate the unique characteristics that are shaping the smartphone usage behavior of Indian users.

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Assi KMeegahapola LDroz WKun PDe Götzen ABidoglia MStares SGaskell GChagnaa AGanbold AZundui TCaprini CMiorandi DZarza JHume ACernuzzi LBison IRodas Britez MBusso MChenu-Abente RGiunchiglia FGatica-Perez D(2023)Complex Daily Activities, Country-Level Diversity, and Smartphone Sensing: A Study in Denmark, Italy, Mongolia, Paraguay, and UKProceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3544548.3581190(1-23)Online publication date: 19-Apr-2023
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Gupta MMehta DPunj AThies I(2022)Sophistication with Limitation: Understanding Smartphone Usage by Emergent Users in IndiaProceedings of the 5th ACM SIGCAS/SIGCHI Conference on Computing and Sustainable Societies10.1145/3530190.3534824(386-400)Online publication date: 29-Jun-2022
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Index Terms

Moving Beyond Market Research: Demystifying Smartphone User Behavior in India
1. Human-centered computing
  1. Ubiquitous and mobile computing
    1. Empirical studies in ubiquitous and mobile computing

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cover image Proceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies

Proceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies Volume 1, Issue 3

September 2017

2023 pages

EISSN:2474-9567

DOI:10.1145/3139486

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Copyright © 2017 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected].

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Publication History

Published: 11 September 2017

Published in IMWUT Volume 1, Issue 3

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Cited By

Chakraborty SAithal P(2024)WhatsApp Based Notification on Low Battery Water Level Using ESP Module and TextMeBOTInternational Journal of Case Studies in Business, IT, and Education10.47992/IJCSBE.2581.6942.0347(291-309)Online publication date: 19-Mar-2024
https://doi.org/10.47992/IJCSBE.2581.6942.0347
Assi KMeegahapola LDroz WKun PDe Götzen ABidoglia MStares SGaskell GChagnaa AGanbold AZundui TCaprini CMiorandi DZarza JHume ACernuzzi LBison IRodas Britez MBusso MChenu-Abente RGiunchiglia FGatica-Perez D(2023)Complex Daily Activities, Country-Level Diversity, and Smartphone Sensing: A Study in Denmark, Italy, Mongolia, Paraguay, and UKProceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3544548.3581190(1-23)Online publication date: 19-Apr-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3544548.3581190
Gupta MMehta DPunj AThies I(2022)Sophistication with Limitation: Understanding Smartphone Usage by Emergent Users in IndiaProceedings of the 5th ACM SIGCAS/SIGCHI Conference on Computing and Sustainable Societies10.1145/3530190.3534824(386-400)Online publication date: 29-Jun-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3530190.3534824
Patel SSasidhar KVaghela MKatrodia PWagani R(2022)An m-Health app that goes beyond screen time applications2022 IEEE 10th Region 10 Humanitarian Technology Conference (R10-HTC)10.1109/R10-HTC54060.2022.9929866(94-99)Online publication date: 16-Sep-2022
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Vaghela MSasidhar KParikh AWagani R(2022)Assessing Mobile Usage, Physical Activity and Sleep Through Smartphone Sensing: A Digital Phenotype StudySN Computer Science10.1007/s42979-022-01221-x3:5Online publication date: 4-Aug-2022
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Sasidhar K(2022)Quantitative Assessment of Smartphone Usage in College Students—A Digital Phenotyping ApproachInternet of Things Based Smart Healthcare10.1007/978-981-19-1408-9_10(217-234)Online publication date: 19-Jul-2022
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