How Many People Have Smartphones in 2024?
Given the growth of mobile commerce, it’s become increasingly important for ecommerce business owners to focus their efforts on mobile marketing. In order to understand how many people have smartphones, let’s look at the latest smartphone users statistics.
How many people have smartphones in 2024?
- 2014: 1.01 billion
- 2015: 1.22 billion
- 2016: 1.43 billion
- 2017: 1.66 billion
- 2018: 1.94 billion
- 2019: 2.27 billion
- 2020: 2.67 billion
- 2021: 3.1 billion
- 2022: 3.62 billion
- 2023: 4.25 billion
- 2024: 4.88 billion
- 2025: 5.28 billion
- 2026: 5.65 billion
- 2027: 6.01 billion
- 2028: 6.22 billion
- 2029: 6.38 billion
The latest figures show an increasing number of smartphone users year after year. In 2024, the number of global smartphone users is estimated at 4.88 billion, marking a 14.9% annual increase. It is also 3.88 billion (nearly five times) more than the number of smartphone users there were in 2014, a decade ago.
In fact, from 2014 to 2024, the total number of global smartphone users grew at an average of 17.1% annually, with the biggest growth coming in 2015. That year, the number of smartphone users grew by 20.7%.
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Smartphones are also currently the most popular electronic devices. The latest smartphone users statistics show that of all the devices being used today, smartphones are the most popular, used by 97.6% of all internet users.
Reports estimate that going forward, the number of global smartphone users will continue to increase every year and hit 6.38 billion by 2029.
Given an expected global population of over 8.5 billion by then, that means that the smartphone penetration rate in 2029 will be around 75.2%. In other words, more than three in four people in the world will be equipped with a smartphone.
Number of smartphone users in advanced and emerging economies
The number of smartphone users is rather disproportionate in its distribution across different economies. As expected, smartphone ownership is significantly higher across advanced economies including most European countries and the US.
The latest statistics on global smartphone users show that the penetration rate of these devices is the highest in France—as many as 82.6% of the population there owns a smartphone.
This is followed by the United Kingdom, with 82.2%, and Germany and the United States, with 81.9% and 81.6%, respectively. Japan rounds out the five countries with the highest smartphone penetration rates at 78.6%.
In emerging economies, however, smartphone usage drops significantly. For instance, just 66.6% of Brazil’s population owns a smartphone. This number falls to 46.5% in India. In Bangladesh, fewer than one in three people (30.4%) are smartphone users.