Forrester Research World Mobile And Smartphone Adoption Forecast, 2014 To 2019 (Global)

The number of global smartphone subscribers is expected to reach 3.5 billion by 2019, crossing the 50% mark for smartphone penetration by population in 2017 and reaching 59% by 2019, up from 28% in 2013. The emergence of smartphones as the new accepted norm is underscored by the fact that the next 1.5 billion subscribers joining the market by 2019 will come from only 12 countries, compared with 34 countries for the first 1.5 billion smartphone subscribers. Most of these markets are highly price-sensitive, and low-cost smartphones will allow users to shift from feature phones to smartphones or they may skip the step of buying a feature phone altogether and upgrade directly to a smartphone. This, along with low-cost data plans and increasing penetration of 3G, mobile messaging apps, social media, mCommerce, and mobile apps, is driving the smartphone market's five-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 11.7%. Our forecast details the global mobile and smartphone installed base and subscriber data. It includes data on business-owned smartphone subscribers and subscribers by operating system (2011 to 2014 only), as well as age and income ownership demographics. It also includes historical data going back to 2009 plus a five-year forecast.