Mobile Gaming Trends In India : How Affordable Devices Are Shaping The Market.

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Gaming has become more accessible than ever for avid gamers across the world. You no longer need to assemble a group of friends to start a card game session. You don’t even need to invest in an expensive console either. Just pull out the smartphone from your pocket and use a rummy APK to start playing rummy online. It is that simple!
This is, of course, assuming that you have a smartphone, sufficient data and the fast internet needed for the ideal gaming experience. In the absence of any one of these, your modern-day gaming experience would become a non-starter. But with smartphone penetration reaching 71% of the population in India, gaming and smartphones are becoming synonymous in the country.
When Smartphones Came to Town
It was only 30 years ago when the then Chief Minister of West Bengal, Jyoti Basu, made the first mobile call in India. Cellular phones remained a novelty for a long time, thanks to the abnormally high call rates. With the internet non-existent in the early days, the utility of the mobile phone was rather limited.
The internet proved to be the big shake-up that unleashed a telecom revolution. 2G may be unacceptable today, but it was good enough to raise the first flush of affordable smartphones. The 100 million internet users from 2010 quadrupled in five years, reaching 400 million in 2015. With the internet accessible to a large population, high call tariffs couldn’t withstand the market movements.
With Jio kickstarting the affordable data packs, competitors followed suit. This made the internet extremely affordable in India. Per GB data in India is a mere $0.09, miles behind the global average of $2.59. Very few countries, like Israel and Italy, can boast of data costs as low as India. With rapidly increasing internet penetration and affordable data, the only missing link was an affordable smartphone.
Companies like Micromax, Lava and Intex were at the core of an affordable smartphone revolution in India. Once Indians got hooked on their features, the sub-10k market in India bloomed. And soon, it was playtime.
Pocketful of Gaming Devices
The best thing that happened for the gaming industry in India was that gaming devices could now fit into our pockets. There are limits to what an average Indian gamer would spend on entertainment. This explains why PC and console gaming remained a niche category in India while mobile gaming raced away.
Fast-forward to today, more than 90% of the gamers in India are engaged in mobile gaming. The influx of affordable smartphones meant that rural penetration of gaming accelerated. In this context, the contribution of the government must also be acknowledged. The Digital India initiative ensured that connectivity extended beyond the metros and into the lower tiers and rural areas. It aimed to fiberise all villages by 2025 under the BharatNet programme. These initiatives ensured that as and when affordable smartphones are made, they have a large customer base to cater to.
India has always been a hotbed for card games, cricket, and, to an extent, casual games as well. With smartphone affordability, suburban and rural Indian gamers could now download rummy APKs and start playing rummy online affordably. This explains why the number of downloads of popular rummy apps like RummyTime runs into millions.
Making Inroads
It is estimated that India will have more than 1 billion smartphone users by 2026. Much of this surge will be fuelled by the 6% CAGR in rural India. The smartphone penetration in urban India has already plateaued and will grow at 2.5% CAGR only. This growth in smartphone penetration is largely based on their continued availability at affordable prices. Besides, this penetration growth will also push the gaming industry from its present market value of $3.8 billion in 2024 to $9.2 billion in 2029.
Thanks to smartphone affordability, 66% of Indian gamers are now from price-sensitive non-metro locations. Take the instance of Poco M6 5G, which is priced at less than ₹9,000. It offers a 6.74-inch screen with an HD+ display and a 90Hz refresh rate. A session of BGMI may overwhelm the phone, but playing crowd favourite Ludo or a rummy online session on RummyTime can be a breeze on this device.
Even market leaders like Samsung offer smartphones like the Galaxy F05 at only ₹6,500. Experts consider its configurations to be sufficient for light gaming sessions. Most leading smartphone companies in India have a presence in the below-10k category. This answers the demands of a large customer base in India, many of whom join the swelling Indian gaming community.
Pan-Indian Entertainment
The affordability of smartphones, combined with the reach and affordability of the internet itself, has been vital in stretching the perimeters of gaming in India. From the expensive gaming consoles in posh metro living rooms to some laidback rummy sessions on a rustic portico, mobile gaming has transcended the lengths and breadths of India. This would not have been possible without the availability of an affordable gaming device in the first place.
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