Sri Lanka: The Land of the ‘Mobile’

           Most of us may recall a time when we only had fixed lines in our houses to make phone calls. However, development of technology enabled the introduction of mobile phones to the local market, which was used by a handful of people back then. With time, mobile phones became more affordable and mainstream; and had the ability to browse the internet. Thereafter, Smartphones were introduced, and almost every single person holds one in their possession. We see that mobile phones, regardless of its make or model have become increasingly popular during the past few years. There are various reasons for this popularity and increase in usage which has an impact on all business activities.

Were you aware of the fact that there are 27 million mobile connections in Sri Lanka when the population is just 21 million?

Believe it or not, this is the current situation and the number of mobile connections has increased by 5 million from January 2017 – January 2018. This provides clear evidence on how much the usage of mobile phones is growing in our community itself. Further, a majority of the mobile connections are 3G or 4G enabled, which indirectly means that most of these mobile phones have access to the internet.

The rise of mobile users in Sri Lanka plays a vital role in business activities as well. Businesses need to understand that people are more into mobile commerce and therefore, mobile marketing needs to be one of the important aspects that are looked into. Company websites need to be mobile friendly and accessible while they focus on developing mobile apps, social media posts, mobile ads are also developed.

Out of the 27 million mobile connections, 5.5 million are active social users.

We saw an increase of 1 million social users over the past 12 months. This too provides insights on what businesses need to focus in terms of their marketing and assess whether their marketing tactics have the ability to deliver results. If 29% of the web traffic is caused by mobile users and if 90% of the Facebook traffic is from mobiles, businesses need to focus on going mobile friendly if they already haven’t.