An interesting info-graphic published by GSMA Intelligence at Mobile World Congress 2015 above shows the world mobile service penetration.
While registered mobile connections (7.05Bn SIM cards) to world population (7.29BN people) is 97% because on average each mobile subscriber has 1.79 SIM’s the total unique mobile subscribers according to GSMA is 3.64Bn. Of these 3.64Bn mobile users 64% already use their phones to access the internet and 36% just use voice calls and text messages.
GSMA say the addressable population for mobile ownership (those over 14 y.o.) is 5.39Bn so the number of unique subscribers to addressable population is 68%. As such there is still room for growth of users as well as for data usage as more people subscribe and more convert to data capable smart phones.
Obviously the customer growth potential is dominantly in the less developed world with near saturation in numbers of unique subscribers in the developed markets.
In Australia ACMA’s 2013-14 Communications Report stated that 94% of Australia’s 23.8M population over 14 (19.3 M people) used a mobile. Thus with 31 million SIM subscriptions in Australia there are 1.7 SIM cards on average for each unique mobile subscriber.
With 94% device penetration most of the mobile growth in Australia (and in the developed world generally) will be generated by further migration to smart phones and more data use particularly by consumption of video content on these devices. As well multiple SIMs per person are likely to increase as people adopt tablet and PC’s with wireless connection and the “things” part of the Internet of Things greatly increase in number.