Director General GSMA Anne Bouverot
In a report Mobile Economy 2015 launched by GSMA’s Director General Anne Bouverot at Mobile World Congress GSMA says that the world’s 3.6 billion unique subscribers (50% of the world’s population) have 7.3 billion subscriptions (SIM connections) and will grow by one billion to 4.6Bn subscribers (59% of the world’s population) with 10Bn SIM subscriptions by 2020.
The GSMA report further says that smartphones in use will go from 2.6Bn in 2014 to 5.9Bn by 2020 during which time the precentage of connections on 3G and 4G networks will rise from 39% to 69%. The data carried on cellular networks is projected to grow by a factor of 10 from 2014 to 2019.
Other big picture statistics from the report include that the mobile industry worldwide contributes US$3.0Tn to GDP and supports 13 million direct plus 11.8 million indirect jobs. World mobile operator revenue in 2014 was reported
to be US$1.15Tn and mobile operators collectively were projected to spend US$1.5Tn in CAPEX between 2015 and 2020.
The GSMA Mobile Economy 2015 report is here and the summary infographic to the report is here.
“A decade ago, just one in five of the global population was a mobile subscriber – we have now surpassed the 50 per cent milestone and can look forward to connecting a billion new subscribers over the next five years,” commented Anne Bouverot, Director General of the GSMA. “Mobile sits at the heart of a new ecosystem that is uniting the digital and physical worlds, and powering economic growth. At the same time, mobile operators continue to deploy networks to all corners of the globe, connecting unconnected citizens and addressing socio-economic challenges in areas such as digital and financial inclusion, healthcare and education.”