Historical forecast, June 2019: Zenith projected that average daily time spent with mobile internet in India would reach 79 minutes by 2021. The figure was a measure of time, not a prediction that mobile internet would account for 79 percent of use.
This corrects the earlier headline, which incorrectly used a percentage.
What the India figures said
Contemporary reporting of Zenith’s India figures put daily mobile-internet consumption at 9.4 minutes in 2013 and an estimated 54 minutes in 2019, with 79 minutes forecast for 2021.
The same report put television viewing in India at 144 minutes a day in 2019. That television number should not be described as time spent on smartphones. Total media consumption was estimated at 320 minutes a day in 2019 and projected to reach 348 minutes in 2021.
On those reported figures, mobile internet’s projected increase from 54 to 79 minutes was 25 minutes a day, or about 46 percent. That calculated growth rate is different from both a 79-minute duration and a percentage share of all media consumption.
How the global forecast differed
Zenith’s own global release covered 57 countries. It estimated average mobile-internet use at roughly 800 hours during 2019 and forecast 930 hours in 2021. It projected mobile internet’s share of global media consumption at 31 percent in 2021, while television would remain slightly larger at 33 percent.
The global and India figures describe different populations and should not be interchanged. Zenith also counted online versions of newspapers, television and radio as internet consumption, while its traditional-media categories referred to print and broadcast use.
A forecast is not a later measurement
The 2019 release explains what Zenith expected at the time. It does not, by itself, establish the actual amount of mobile-internet use in 2021. Comparing the prediction with the outcome would require a later dataset with matching definitions and population coverage.
Image note: Illustrative smartphone-use photo for Zenith’s 2019 India forecast. The projection was 79 minutes of daily mobile-internet use by 2021, not 79 percent.
