Indians

23% of Indians consumed media exclusively on mobile in Q1 2025, up from 15% in Q1 2023, sharpening coverage of a vast but exposed digital audience.

Who they are

Indians appear in this coverage as India’s technology users, consumers and online participants rather than as a company or institution. Stories place them at the center of global platforms’ India strategies, domestic digital-policy initiatives, and the risks associated with pervasive smartphone and social-media use.

The recent arc

Coverage peaked in 2025Q1 and shifted toward everyday digital behavior and its consequences. EY reported that Indians spent 1.1 trillion hours on smartphones in 2024, with about 70% of time devoted to social media, gaming and video, while reporting on Kutumb examined community apps’ role in political mobilization, disinformation and hate. Reuters also tied a Q4 2024 rise in crypto-exchange trading to young people seeking supplemental income. სახელმწიფ

The tension

The central tension is between digital access and digital vulnerability. Google’s expansion of Gemini and Gemini Live in Indian languages, Apple and Google’s involvement in a proposed state-backed GOV.in app-store access plan, and the mobile-only media trend show the appeal of serving this audience; reports on scam compounds coercing Indians into online fraud, $1.3 billion in reported cyberscam losses, Pegasus-linked phone targeting, and poorly scrutinized political apps show the associated exposure.

Why it matters

If mobile-only consumption and intensive smartphone use continue to rise, India’s users will become still more consequential to platform distribution, language-localized AI and public digital infrastructure. The same concentration could amplify the stakes of app-store governance, content safeguards, privacy protections and anti-scam enforcement; whether those systems keep pace remains unresolved in the coverage.

Related: India · Facebook · Google · Apple · Internal docs detail Facebook's struggles with violence-inciting conte · Google ramps up efforts to integrate AI across its products in India,