New Delhi September 12 2013: India trend watcher and analyst Juxt Consult, has released findings from its annual study of Mobile  usage in India. We bring you the highlights:

Mobile users: India has 554.8 million mobile users. Those users actively use 643.4 million SIMs (Active SIMs).... ie 1.16 active SIMs per user. But they have as many as 773.9 million valid SIMs which they may or may not be actively using (Live SIMs) , that is 1.4 live SIMs per user

There are 23.8 million users who use Internet on their mobile phone using any data connection such as GPRS/EDGE/3G

As many as 110.8 million use services like music/games/video download/bill pay etc using operators’ portals.

95% of all active connections are pre-paid. 93% of those are on GSM networks; 7% are on CDMA. 9% of the 554.8 million mobile users use multiple SIMs

Rural rules: Mobile penetration in urban India is 70%; in rural India, it is 36%... however rural India has already overtaken urban India in mobile usage. 54% of the users are in villages. There are 298 million mobile users in rural India, using 346.7 million active SIMs

There are 256.2 million mobile users in urban India, using 296.7 million active SIMs

IT's a male thing: 64% of the mobile users are male. Gender divide clearly visible: 55% penetration among male; 37% among female

Young and mobile: More than 65% of the mobile users are below 35.  Penetration is highest (75%) among 19-24 age group. It is still fairly low (44%) among teens and in 46-55 age group (44%)

Students (33%) and housewives (22%) together account for bulk (55%) of total mobile users

Internet: There are 143.2 million Internet users in India . This includes all those who access Internet through  one or more of the following: desktop/laptop; mobile data connections; mobile operators’ portals & smartTV

Mobile Internet: There are 23.8 million mobile data connection users . 9.3 million of them access Internet only through mobile data connection. This exclusive mobile Internet users’ base was almost non-existent two years back

There are 110.4 million users who use operators’ portals (on-deck). 48.6 million of them do not access Internet any other way.

Brands: Top three (Airtel, Vodafone, Idea) accounting for 69% of the user base. Airtel leads with 30% of the user base. Link to full presentation here