The smartphone rage is catching up in the country, especially in urban India, says a survey conducted by Nielsen Informate Mobile Insights. There are 27 million smartphone users in urban India – a total of 9 per cent of the entire mobile user base in the urban demography.

India is considered to be one of the fastest growing mobile markets with around 900 million mobile phone users, according to TRAI estimates. The country’s mobile handset market witnessed 6 per cent growth in the first quarter of 2012 while the smartphone market in the country surged by 17 per cent, says market research firm Gartner. As consumer usage on smartphones goes much beyond voice calling and texting, that market has become a veritable hotspot for content consumption and mobile advertising.

“For the first time ever, we have seized the opportunity that smartphones hold for mobile advertising in India. It now enables marketers to increase investments in the mobile medium, catering to a large enough market that consumes both rich media and advertising,” says Farshad Family, MD (Media) of Nielsen India.

The survey has also covered the usage pattern of smartphone users. While 22 million people use their smartphones for social networking, 24 million use it for online searching, 21 million for looking up app stores and 19 million each use these devices for chatting and mailing, respectively. Around 16 million users view streaming videos; another 16 million use smartphones for maps and navigation while 8 million each use it for banking & finance, travel, shopping and accessing Web