India’s digital universe set to expand nine-fold by 2020: report
15 Apr 2014
The 'Internet of Things (IoT),' is expected to boost the expansion of the digital universe in India nine-fold to 2.8 zetabytes (2.8 billion terrabytes) by 2020 from 326 exabytes (see table at the end) in 2013.
India's share of the global digital universe is set to double over this decade – from 3 per cent at present to 6 per cent in 2020, according to the report by technology company EMC and research firm IDC, the report said.
IoT refers to the increasing number of everyday objects equipped with unique identifiers and the ability to automatically record, report and receive data.
A shoe sensor capable of tracking the speed of at which the wearer is running or surveillance cameras tracking traffic patterns are examples of IoT.
According to IDC the data from such connected devices would make up 10 per cent of the country's data by 2020 from 4 per cent currently.
Currently, 60 per cent of data is accounted for by mature markets such as Germany, Japan and the US, but by 2020, the percentage would flip, with emerging markets, including India, Brazil, China, Mexico and Russia, accounting for the majority of data, the study said.
Thanks to the internet penetration the digital universe is poised to touch 44 trillion gigabytes by 2020, against 4.4 trillion gigabytes in 2013.
The digital universe in India is nearly doubling in size every two years and is expected to multiply nine-fold between 2013 and 2020 – from 326 exabytes to 2.8 zetabytes.
The explosive growth of the digital universe would be driven by strong adoption of wireless technologies coupled with the growth in internet consumption, migration to digital TV and increasing 'sensors' based machine to machine communication the report said.
''China already accounts for 14 per cent of the digital universe. Though US' share has declined as the other emerging markets have grown, it is still 26 per cent. India's share is also growing from 3 per cent in 2010 to 6 per cent in 2020,'' EMC India and SAARC president Rajesh Janey told reporters.
He added that increasing digitisation across business and government and a steady rise in social and mobile usage by everyone was driving India's digital universe.
According to the report mobility would be a key driver of the Digital Universe with mobile 'Connected Things' generating 18 per cent of the Digital Universe in 2014 and is estimated to grow to 27 per cent by 2020.
