Social media growth in India is dwindling, reveals Gartner

The latest report by Gartner paints a rather contradicting picture, than the one we already have in our minds regarding the performance of social media in our country. The report, unlike popular belief suggests that factors, like concerns over one’s privacy and the cultural fabric have been actually stunting the growth of social media in the country, and that in the coming five years or so, India could rank well below many other nations in this respect, despite boasting of having a rather large audience for social media.

The report further goes on to state that areas like IT, mobile, cloud and social media are poised to grow big in the coming years, so much so that they will go on to shape the businesses that use them in this duration, and technological trends that will remain central to them will be - explosive use of media tablets, mobile applications, context-aware computing, Internet, analytics and in-memory computing (IMC).

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Losing ground! (Image credit: Getty Images)

The Gartner report further draws attention to the fact that in India, the youth and more so, the more educated and technology-savvy sections would adopt to the new technologies. Gartner Research VP Rakesh Kumar was quoted as saying, “India is poised to become one of the world’s biggest consumer economies in the coming five years. By 2014, it is expected to have more than one billion mobile subscribers and will also see significant roll-out of new IT infrastructure in both public and private sectors.” The report among other things pointed out that India is an important market for Facebook, with almost a claim to 25 million subscribers, and there are several others co-existing with a decent-sized user base, too. Gartner revealed that in what has been emerging as a new trend, companies in sectors like FMCG, consumer durables, auto and telecom are turning to social media, increasingly to better connect with the audience and receive feedback. “This will lead to a further engagement of brands with customers and helps the economy as well,” Kumar added further. 

The report further added that the country has also been doing well in gaining ground in application development, maintenance, support and innovation globally, and revealed that “the same now needs to be used domestically.” “A sense of entrepreneurship is embedded into the Indian psyche which is beginning to lead to startups exploring areas such as pattern mapping. What will now be important is that the same is deployed in the domestic market as well,” he added.

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