97 percent of Indians will own a cellphone by 2014

 With number of cellphone makers and network providers growing by the day in India, it is only a natural thing that more and more Indians will own a cellphone. Now this thought is backed by a survey.

According to market research firm iSuppli, the wireless subscriptions in India are expected to be more than 97 percent in the 1.26 billion population. The first four months of 2010 alone witnessed an addition of 19 million new subscribers. In fact, by end of this year, the total wireless subscriptions are projected to reach 766.0 million. This is an increase of 49.5 percent from 2009?s subscriber count of 525.1 million.iSuppli forecasts show that this pace will be continuing in the future as well. It adds that the number of subscribers will increase in the next four years and will touch the 1 billion mark by 2012. By 2014, mobile teledensity - a measure of cell phone availability - likely will reach 97.4 percent per 100 persons.

"Such high mobile teledensity means that almost everyone - except children and the abjectly poor - will have a cell phone in India, with those having multiple mobiles boosting total subscription rates and compensating for those without," said Jagdish Rebello, Ph.D., Senior Director and Principal Analyst for Wireless Research at iSuppli.

The Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) for mobile handsets in India will reach 18.6 percent from 2009 to 2014.