Sales of affordable smartphones with in-built camera and internet-enabled features are set to shoot up to 160 million in 2016-17 from 100 million in 2015-16, an Assocham study has said. Consequent to smartphones serving the needs of amateur photographers and enthusiasts, the rise of such phones is eating into the demand for digital cameras which witnessed a drop in sales by more than 35 percent in the last one year, the study said. "Technology is changing at such a fast pace that product developers have to think ahead of times, or else the top selling products of the present times can become outdated, without the manufacturers and those dominating the market today realising it," said Assocham secretary D.S. Rawat. "There has been a subsequent rise in the demand of smartphones in the country in the last one year and one of the reasons behind this growing importance is largely due to the increase in social networking site. "Most of the youth in the country share photographs online and upload photographs which has become a new trend in the metros thus giving rise to the need for smartphones," Rawat added.

Smartphone sales more than doubled from 44 million units in 2013 to 100 million units in 2016. The volume of smartphone sales is expected to touch 160 million units by 2017, the study added. "Another feature of the smart devices market in India is that the country has a huge telephone subscribers base of about a billion users who are becoming aspirational even at the bottom of pyramid," said Rawat. According to the Assocham survey, most of the respondents said the biggest advantage of clicking pictures with smartphones is that they can be shared instantly with friends and family—a feature which is absent with most of the point and short cameras. Almost 75 percent of the sales of mobiles and tablets came from consumers residing in tier-I and tier-II cities. As per the study, sales of personal computers and MP3 players have already started declining due to the impact of smartphone and tablet adoption.