1.76 billion people will own and use a smartphone by the end of 2014, according to the latest study by marketing research firm eMarketer. Those 1.76 billion people make up approximately 25 percent of the total world population, and also represent a 25% jump in growth when compared to 2013 smartphone adoption stats.
According to eMarketer, however, these stats do not reflect the individual adoption rates of many countries. “Consumers in the Asia-Pacific region,” eMarketer says, “will account for more than half of all global smartphone users this year.”
Mirroring its predictions from January, eMarketer states that by 2017 more than 33 percent of people will use smartphones globally, a modest prediction when compared to an eariler study by Ericsson, which estimates that global smartphone penetration will reach 60% in 2019.