Smartphones will account for two of three mobile...

Smartphones will account for two of three mobile connections globally by 2020, said the GSM Association of mobile operators in a study released Thursday (http://bit.ly/1nOleL5). The study said smartphones account for one of every three mobile connections today, or more than 2 billion mobile connections. It forecast smartphone connections will grow threefold over the next six years, reaching 6 billion by 2020, to two-thirds of the 9 billion mobile connections by that time. Basic phones, feature phones and data terminals such as tablets, dongles and routers will be the remainder, it said. “The smartphone has sparked a wave of global innovation that has brought new services to millions and efficiencies to businesses of every type,” it said. “Smartphones will be the driving force of mobile industry growth over the next six years, with 1 billion new smartphone connections expected over the next 18 months.” Emerging markets overtook the “developed world” in terms of smartphone connections three years ago and today account for two of every three smartphones on the planet, the new study said. It predicted that by 2020, four of five smartphone connections worldwide will come from the developing world. China led the world with 629.2 million smartphone connections at the end of Q2, followed by the U.S. (196.8 million connections), Brazil (141.8 million), India (111 million) and Indonesia (95 million). In many developed markets, smartphone penetration is approaching the 80 percent “ceiling” at which growth tends to slow, the study said. Smartphone adoption is forecast to reach 75 percent in Europe and North America by 2020, though smartphone growth in these two regions has slowed in recent years, it said. Smartphone connections grew 35 percent in North America and 39 percent in Europe between 2010 and 2013, compared with growth rates higher than 80 percent during that same period in Asia Pacific and Latin America, it said.