Ericsson predicts that at the end of 2019 years in Europe there will be 765 million smartphones.

• Market saturation of smartphones will exceed 100% (more smartphones than residents).
• Smartphones currently add up to 35% of all phones in the world. In 2019 they will account for 80%. In Africa and the Middle East half of the phones will be smartphones.

The increase in the number of smartphones in the world is gaining momentum. In the first quarter of 2014 smartphones accounted for 65% of all phones sold. There are now 6.8 bn mobile subscription in the world. Just over one-third of them are supported by smartphones. More than 60% is still attached to simple mobile phones of the old type. Mobile device market remains receptive, especially in the area of smartphones from medium and low shelves.

In the first quarter of 2014, 120 million new mobile subscriptions were added globally. Half of all new subscribers of mobile telephony come from five Asian countries (India, China, Indonesia, Thailand). The penetration of mobile services reached a global level of 93%. This means that the number of operating SIM cards all over the world is approaching the number of inhabitants.

5 Ericsson forecasts at the end of 2019:

• In 2019, there will be 9.2 billion mobile subscriptions in the world, of which smartphones will constitute 80% (2.6 billion devices in LTE networks). In 2013, no more than 30% of mobile phone users had access to mobile broadband - in 2019, it will be 80%.
• At the end of 2019 the number of smartphones in Europe will reache 765 million, exceeding the number of inhabitants of the Old Continent. For comparison - in Africa and the Middle East, smartphones will constitute 50% of all phones.
• LTE networks are currently operating in all regions of the world. Ericsson forecasts that in 2019 LTE reaches 2.6 billion subscriptions, while WCDMA/HSPA - 4.5 billion.
• Ericsson predicts that traffic growth in years 2013-2019 will have compound annual growth rate of 45%. This means that the amount of data transferred in 2019 will be 10 times greater than today.
• 50% of the traffic in mobile networks in 2019, will be generated by video. The volume of transmitted video in mobile networks between 2013 and 2019 will increase 13-fold.
  

Source: media.ericsson.pl