There will be more than six billion smartphone subscriptions by 2020

It’s hard enough to wrap my head around the fact that there are currently 2.6 billion smartphone subscriptions across the globe, but the latest Mobility Report from Ericsson claims that the number will skyrocket to 6.1 billion by the year 2020. That’s right, despite the fact that smartphone growth in developing nations has been leveling off, the number of smartphone subscriptions will more than double within five years, at which point nearly three fourths of the world’s population will own a smartphone. 

Today there are 2.6 billion smartphone subscriptions globally, and while growth has been levelling off in developed markets, it’s not stalling altogether by a long shot. By 2020, we will see a tipping point of sorts, when globally there will be 6.1 smartphone users, finally overtaking the number of fixed line subscriptions. The numbers come from the latest Mobility Report from Ericsson, annual research the telecoms company conducts using data from around 100 carriers globally. Those 6.1 billion smartphone users works out to some 70 percent of the worlds population using smartphones in five years’ time, a measure of just how central these devices are becoming to how we communicate and do much more. “Total mobile” subscriptions by 2020 will actually number 9.2 billion, and when you take into account Internet-of-things and M2M services, mobile broadband and even some basic remaining feature phones, there will be 26 billion connected devices in five years’ time. Still, despite the rise of these new mobile-based services, and the growth of other categories like tablets, it’s smartphones that are leading the mobile charge. By 2020 they will account for 80 percent of all mobile data traffic.