India’s daily multimodal AI use seen nearly doubling to 43% by 2030: Ericsson ConsumerLab

India’s daily use of multimodal artificial intelligence (AI) is expected to nearly double by 2030, rising to 43% from 22% currently, according to a new Ericsson ConsumerLab report.

The projected adoption in India is also higher than the global estimate of 30% by 2030, pointing to a faster shift towards AI services that can work across text, voice, images and video.

The report said the increase in AI use will also change how consumers interact with mobile networks. As people use AI more frequently while on the move and share more images, videos and voice inputs with AI services, mobile traffic is expected to become more upload-heavy and unevenly distributed.

This could put greater pressure on network responsiveness and uplink capacity, particularly in areas where demand on mobile networks is already high.

“As AI becomes more multimodal and mobile, consumers will expect these experiences to work reliably across devices and wherever they are,” Nitin Bansal, Managing Director, Ericsson India, said.

“India’s strong digital foundation provides an opportunity to support this next phase of AI adoption. High-performing networks will be important to delivering the responsiveness, capacity and reliability that emerging AI experiences will require,” he added.

AI super users to drive usage

The report also highlighted the emergence of AI “super users”, who currently account for around 10% of consumers globally but are expected to make up 30% by 2030. These users are projected to generate more than 80% of all AI activity.

Their behaviour is already pointing towards more frequent AI interactions across multiple devices and locations, increasing reliance on mobile connectivity. For these users, response time has 2.5 times more influence on network satisfaction compared with average users, the report said.

Globally, daily multimodal AI use is expected to rise from 10% currently to 30% by 2030. The report said daily multimodal AI use, AI usage across multiple devices and the number of locations where consumers use AI on the go are all expected to triple by 2030.

The research also pointed to growing adoption of agentic AI, which can perform tasks such as making bookings, comparing products and managing schedules on behalf of users. Around 38% of smartphone users across the markets surveyed expect to use agentic AI by 2030, compared with 4% currently.

The report said consumers expect such services to save them around one hour of screen time each day. The findings are based on responses from more than 43,000 smartphone users aged 15 to 69 across 27 markets, including India.