(Diya TV) – India is smartphone-obsessed, and is proving it, just check out these Smartphone statistics to see its global impact and you will not doubt it. With over 150 brands of smartphones sold in the country, they took firm control of the No. 2 spot, with a user base of 220 million, according to a report by Counterpoint Research. China ranks No. 1 overall, boasting a smartphone user base well north of one billion.

India, Asia’s third-largest economy, oversaw a 15 percent shipment increase of smartphones during the Q4 period of 2015 (October-December). “The Indian smartphone demand grew strongly during the holiday season in the Q4 2015 quarter,” said Pavel Naiya, a research analyst at Counterpoint Research.

The bump up has been anticipated for some time, but happened sooner than analysts had expected-in August of last year, the American research firm IDC had predicted that India would overtake the United States in the smartphone market by 2017. In 2015 alone, over 100 million smartphones were shipped to the country, which is north of 23 percent more than the previous year, Counterpoint said.

“This speaks volumes for the scale Indian market provides for any player in the mobile connected ecosystem. Though India still has a long way to go as the smartphone penetration of the total potential population is still below 30%,” said Tarun Pathak, senior analyst at Counterpoint Research. This when compared with other countries isn’t so high, Australia has a smartphone penetration of 69.30%, over double that of the “No.1 smartphone using country – India”

India’s domestic brands, such as Micromax, Intex, and Lava compete closely with larger global names like Samsung and Lenovo, research has revealed.

Even with the rapid growth, analysts are now expecting advancement will continue at an even greater speed. “Even broader and faster” in 2016 experts have said will be supported by domestic programs, such as the country’s “Make in India” campaign. The program fosters domestic manufacturing and promotion; there are already over 20 mobile brands being manufactured in the country.

“Almost half of the total mobile phones shipped in India during the quarter (Q4) were assembled in India driving the Make In India trend,” Counterpoint added.

The internet is helping to fuel the boom, the research found-out of all smartphone sales in 2015, almost one in three were purchased online.