July 2017

India is the second largest smartphone market in the world with 300 million users across the country. Nearly 1.3 billion people are densely spread throughout the geography, making connectivity both difficult and in-demand.

Demand for smart devices grew 18% in 2016. The market size and promising demand growth present huge market opportunities in cover glass, optical fiber, and cabling and connectivity solutions.

Demand for Durability

Along with being popular, mobile phones serve as the primary Internet access point for many in rural India. Oftentimes, banking and other services that are difficult to access are now done entirely on mobile.

A large percentage of smartphone users are first time buyers of phones at the value price range (priced at $175 or less).

How Corning Plays a Role

Because buying a device can cost a significant portion of income, users want to avoid the additional burden of having to repair or replace a damaged screen. That’s why it’s essential devices use tough, damage-resistant Corning® Gorilla® Glass.

Corning’s partnership with Indian smartphone manufacturers is helping to provide durable devices meant to prevent both damages and worry. Corning® Gorilla® Glass helps prevent cracks and scratches – most value-segment consumers’ biggest complaint about their current mobile device.

More than half of the country is aware of Gorilla® Glass, and 97% of those aware of it have stated that it’s important that their device has Corning® Gorilla® Glass.

Rajiv Makhni, managing editor, Technology, NDTV, is one of the many Indians who looks for Gorilla® Glass on a device. “Corning® Gorilla® Glass 5 should be the de facto standard,” said Makhni.

As availability of smart devices grows, the demand for bandwidth will skyrocket. Corning’s solutions play a role in dramatically increasing connection speeds and reliability for broadband networks. Subsequently, the datacenter market in India is growing at about 10% each year, presenting a projected $66M opportunity.

In India, the demand for optical fiber cables, to expand network reach and enhance network capacity, has already more than doubled in the last five years, and this growth isn’t expected to slow anytime soon.

However, to provide access to each citizen, dense fiber networks need to deploy to rural regions across the country’s vast geography. With a country roughly one-third the size of the United States with four times its population, building dense networks to provide reliable connections is no easy feat.

Both state-owned and private carrier networks are now focused on strengthening the fiber networks in the country. Network owners have realized the importance of future proofing infrastructure and are deploying high fiber count cables in anticipation of further explosion in bandwidth demand.

Today, the teledensity in India stands at a healthy 90% with over 1.1 billion connections. However, broadband penetration remains low with only 18% of India’s population having access to Internet connectivity at speeds of >512 kbps. The Government is rolling out networks to provide broadband connectivity to 250,000 villages by 2018 and to connect 55,000 unconnected villages over the next 5 years. The private carriers are adding capacity as subscribers are increasingly accessing content over 3G and 4G connections leading to multi-fold increase in data consumption.

Broadband highways, universal access to mobile connectivity, and public Internet access are just a few initiatives to provide the need and the structure for enhancing connectivity across the country.

How Corning Plays a Role

Corning is poised to cater to this growing market opportunity. Its expertise in optical fiber and cable, datacenters, fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) will support the accelerating demand for bandwidth in the country.

Optical Fiber:

In recent times the Indian market has witnessed an upsurge in demand for reliable high speed data services. Telecom operators are investing in optical fiber networks on large scale in order to cater to the market appetite.

Today Corning remains the worldwide market leader and is the most widely deployed brand of fiber. Corning fiber is recognized in the industry for their excellent performance characteristics, quality, and reliability. Corning manufactures optical fiber in a state-of-the-art facility in India to support the digital networks of tomorrow.

Corning strives to provide value to the world through tough devices and seamless connectivity worldwide. Through this goal, we can address huge market opportunities while increasing and sustaining the world’s network of connected users.

Fiber-to-the-Home

FTTH dramatically increases connection speeds and reliability for broadband networks. Corning Optical Communications is an industry-leading supplier of FTTH product solutions. With more than 10 years and in excess of 25 million homes passed (HP) and counting, they are well-equipped to provide solutions to millions more rural Indian homes in need of access.

Datacenters:

As the datacenter market in India steadily grows, a number of large companies are looking to jump on the opportunity. Local Indian banks, large telecom companies, and global organizations like Google, Amazon, Apple, Cisco, Microsoft, Juniper and local e-commerce companies like Flipkart are continuing to invest heavily in datacenter infrastructure. Corning, with its award-winning products for the datacenter market, is looking to expand as more opportunities arise.

Corning is also providing high level product and installation trainings to its certified installers to help its end customer’s get the best installation with superior network performance.