Everyone knows mobile computing has gotten big. But every so often a number comes along that still amazes us.
IDC has released a study that predicts worldwide smartphone shipments will grow 9.8% in 2015 to a total of 1.43 billion units.
This is equal to about 19.6% of the world's population (7.3 billion). In other words, 1 out of every 5 people in the world got a new smartphone in 2015.
Gartner is forecasting 2015 mobile phone shipments (smart and otherwise) of 1.9 billion, which means 26% of humans got a new cellphone (smart and otherwise) in 2015.
Another great stat comes from the Ericsson Mobility Report.
As their chart below shows, the global number of mobile subscriptions (7.4 billion) now exceeds the number of humans (7.3 billion) Their data also shows about 47% (3.4 billion) of all humans have a smartphone.
Ericsson is forecasting the number of smartphone subscriptions will grow to 6.4 billion in 2021. This means over 80% of the world's population will have a smartphone in 2021.
OK, we are overstating this a bit. As Ericsson points out in their report, many people have multiple mobile subscriptions. Key quote:
... inactive subscriptions and multiple device ownership, e.g. for business and private use, or to optimize pricing by using different operators for different calls (this is common for example in parts of Africa). In developed markets, users add devices such as tablets. This means that the number of subscribers is lower than the number of subscriptions – the current figures are around 4.9 billion subscribers versus 7.4 billion subscriptions
So really only 2/3rds of the world's population currently has a mobile subscription. That's still amazing.
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