The “digital divide” has antecedents in the communications business. For many decades, policy makers struggled to figure out how to provide basic telephone service to billions of human beings who “had never made a phone call.”
And though household income and use of the Internet, mobile phones or fixed network telephones are correlated and causal, in any market, it still would be reasonable to expect that smart phone technologies will rapidly allow hundreds of millions of people to use the Internet for the first time, in the same way that mobile networks solved the problem of getting phone service to the “next billion” users.
Over 6.6 billion mobile phones will be in use by the end of 2017, according to CCS Insight's new market forecast. About 66 percent of them will be smart phones, up from less than 25 percent in 2012.
In the first three months of 2013, smart phone shipments exceeded those of non-smartphones for the first time ever. Sales of smartphones have been helped by new, cheaper devices, especially, but not only, in emerging markets. The mobile and media analyst firm expects 1.86 billion mobile phones to be shipped in 2013, of which 53 percent will be smart phones
That means smart phone markets in Western Europe and North America will see penetration levels approaching saturation point in these markets within three years.
More than 50 percent of the mobile phones in use in these regions are already smart phones. CCS Insight predicts this figure will grow to more than 80 percent in 2015. Beyond 2015, much of the growth will come from emerging markets.
At the same time, sales of tablets are rising at a staggering rate. Altogether, global shipments of smart mobile devices (smartphones and tablets) will increase 2.5 times between 2012 and 2017, to reach 2.1 billion units. CCS Insight predicts that by 2017 the combined number of mobile phones and tablets in use will exceed the world's population.
Nor shouild we underestimate the role of smart phone access in narrowing “gaps” between regions, states and population segments in use of the Internet, either in developing or developed regions.
It now is clear that the ways people choose to use the Internet is becoming more segmented, and that many users prefer to use smart phones rather than fixed Internet connections.
According to a 2013 analysis conducted by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, the digital divide between Latinos and whites is smaller than what it had been just a few years ago.
To be sure, there are sure to be gaps between first world and third world access speeds. As more gigabit networks are deployed in developed areas, the gap might even increase. But it also will be the case that “some Internet access” will be available to most people in emerging markets faster than many now predict.
At that point, ITU had estimated that the “number of people without access to telephony service has decreased to less than one-fifth of world population.”
The big breakthrough was mobile phone service. It took around 125 years to reach the first billion fixed lines across the world (1876-2001).
Mobile telephony has reached the first billion in 21 years (1981-2002) and the second billion users within just three years (2002-2005).
While the installed base of smart phones accounted for just over 20 percent in emerging markets at the end of 2012, Ovum estimates that it will reach nearly 50 percent by 2017, which translates to over two billion devices.
As the fastest-growing segment within overall devices, smart phones will be a critical driver of increased mobile Internet use across emerging markets, Ovum says.
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