Global smartphone penetration hits 4.3bn in five years

The Global System for Mobile Communications Association (GSMA) says almost 4.3 billion people have access to smartphones, accounting for 53 percent of the global population who have access to the internet at the end of 2023.

The report entitled, ‘The State of Mobile Internet Connectivity 2024,’ analysed the key trends of global smartphone and internet usage since 2015.

According to the GSMA Consumer Survey, knowledge of the type of device used to access the internet is important, as access to smartphones enables a richer and broader connectivity experience.

“Mobile internet adoption continues to increase, with 57 percent of the world’s population accounting for 4.6 billion people using mobile internet on their own devices,” the report said.

The regions surveyed are: North America, Europe and Central Asia, East Asia and Pacific, Latin America and Caribbean, Middle East and North Africa, South Asia and Sub-Sahara Africa.

GSMA further said that smartphone owners are much more likely to be aware of and adopt mobile internet and use it more frequently and for a wider variety of tasks.

Read also: Nigeria’s smartphone adoption surpasses feature phones first time ever

“Almost 80 percent of mobile internet subscribers globally now access the internet on a 4G or 5G smartphone,” the report said.

However, there has been a significant increase since 2019 when the devices accounted for only 59 percent of mobile internet subscribers rising to 75 percent in 2022.

“Between 2022 and 2023, an additional 330 million people became mobile internet users on 4G or 5G smartphones,” it said.

The long-term growth is significant in South Asia, where feature phones and 3G smartphones accounted for 49 percent of devices used by mobile internet subscribers in 2019; by the end of 2023, this had fallen to 19 percent.