Figures from digital marketing specialist eMarketer anticipate a 25% year-on-year growth in the number of smartphone owners worldwide. By the end of 2014, the company expects that 1.76 billion people will own smartphones and use them at least once a month.
The report also says that over half of the population in nine countries will have adopted smartphones by the end of 2014, with the UK and the USA both passing the 50% mark this year.
Worldwide, almost a quarter of the population will use smartphones this year - increasing to more than a third of people by 2017. These figures relate to individual users and don’t account for the number of devices each person may have.
Monica Peart, senior forecasting analyst at eMarketer, said “By 2015, we estimate that 15 countries worldwide will have seen more than half their populations adopt smartphones. The embrace of mobile technology among nearly 500 million people in these countries will have wide-ranging influence on media usage, ecommerce and marketing.”