Why Indians still like their landline phone?

The world’s fastest countries like India and China have actively embraced mobile technology to drive for personal banking and retail transactions. This was one of the key findings of the Consumers and Convergence Report IV conducted by KPMG among 5,627 consumers in 22 nations this year.



According to Jehil Thakkar, Executive Director, KPMG, “ 5% of total respondents conduct banking through a mobile device almost daily while 10 percent do so on a weekly basis. Of those surveyed, 43 percent said that they have done banking through their mobile device at some point.”

Out of 5,627 respondents, 300 respondents in India were comfortable using their mobiles for banking, financial transactions and were more anxious to give Personal Identifiable Information (PII).The consumers of India and China showed keen interest to share their personal details.

The report states that India can pay a behavioural pattern in convergence. Though there was a high end to mobile technology, a majority of the consumers are still not ready to drop their landline. 38% of them still find the landline more reliable; 54% wished to keep their landline for the Internet connection; 45% wanted to continue holding on to their landline as a matter of habit; 40% felt it was more cost effective for some or all services and 18 percent of them kept it in anticipation of future services such as IPTV.

As per the survey by KPMG, globally, 84% of the consumers continue to have a landline connection.

The above results are drawn with reference to an assumption made among the industry observers that the consumers around the world particularly the younger generation are becoming mobile-tech savvy. But that could hardly be the case as per the survey carried out by KPMG recently.

Meanwhile, the report also listed out a few insights over Convergence becoming a reality. One among them was that consumers were increasingly concerned about privacy and security when using their mobile phones, while more consumers were comfortable using their mobile phones for banking and retail. On the other hand, consumers also believed that most content should be free, but they were willing to pay for some premium content such as movies and music.