India said mobile phones must include a panic-button feature from the start of next year and incorporate satellite-based navigation technology from 2018 as officials try to make the nation a safer place for women.

The emergency button would be activated when a designated key is pressed, for instance by holding it down for a certain length of time, according to a statement from the telecommunications ministry in New Delhi. All manufacturers, including companies such as Apple Inc. and Samsung Electronics Co., would need to comply.

India is among the fastest-growing smartphone markets and has about one billion mobile-phone users. That’s stoked demand for technology-based security assistance in a nation with an average of four rapes an hour and one of the world’s lowest police-to-citizen ratios.

"Technology is solely meant to make human life better and what better than using it for the security of women," Telecom Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said in a statement in New Delhi.