Those of you who are reading this report most possibly cannot think of a life without a smartphone. From a unpretentious machine to make phone calls, it has now become an intrinsic and fundamental device to the very existence of us. Our phone numbers are our gateways to our entire lives as the governments recognise us through them.
So how many in the world actually have a smartphone? Well, according to new research from Strategy Analytics, half of the world population don't have a smartphone.
Slice it the other way, as of June 2021, half the world’s entire population now owns a smartphone. Some 4 billion people use a smartphone today. That is a huge number. No other technological device has this much penetration.
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"Smartphone is the most successful computer ever"
And it has been a dramatic rise in 27 years.
Yiwen Wu, Senior Analyst at Strategy Analytics, said, “We estimate the global smartphone user base has risen dramatically from just 30k people in 1994 to 1.00 billion in 2012, and a record 3.95 billion today in June 2021."
For the record, the world population is pegged around 7.90 billion people Linda Sui, Senior Director at Strategy Analytics, added, “The world’s first modern smartphone, IBM Simon, was launched commercially in the United States way back in 1994. This was followed by other famous models, such as the Nokia 9110 Communicator in 1998 and Ericsson R380 for Europe in 2000. Apple iPhone popularized the smartphone in 2007, while Google Android democratized the smartphone with an affordable software platform from 2008.”
Neil Mawston, Executive Director at Strategy Analytics, added, “The smartphone is the most successful computer of all time."
Strategy Analytics predicted that 5 billion people will be using smartphones worldwide by 2030. It is not clear what the population of the world is expected to be at that time.
