Lets Verify Some Mobile Numbers Again - Time to update and revise our big picture numbers for mobile

From time to time I release comprehensive industry stats via my consultancy. And then from time to time, I post public domain stats to verify or correct or balance out those stats, as other sources come out with their numbers. So lets do the big 'State of the Mobile' blog, which seems to coincide with the Mobile World Congress quite often in terms of its timing.

7.9 BILLION MOBILE SUBSCRIPTIONS, 4.8 BILLION UNIQUES

So first the single biggest number of our industry. The Subscriptions number in other words, the active accounts number. Yeah it keeps going up and up and up. We have Cisco giving us the latest number at.. 7.9 Billion (end of 2015). That is up from 7.3 Billion in 2014 says Cisco. So yeah, very nice big numbers and still huge growth. Now, those are not 'unique users' because some of us have more than one device and some of us have more than one account (SIM card) to put into one of our phones or devices. How many uniques? Cisco gives us that measure as well. They counted 4.8 Billion unique mobile users in 2015. Thats 66% of the total planet's population of any age who have at least one mobile phone and at least one active mobile account. By the way, how many of those 7.9 Billion are 'non-human' accounts ie M2M accounts? The GSM Association tells us that in 2015 that number is 300 million. So 7.6 Billion mobile subscriptions are used by humans, 300 million by machines.

2.6 BILLION SMARTPHONES IN USE

Then we have the GSM Association's count of smartphones in use. They just counted that the world has 2.6 Billion smartphones in use. Isn't that nice. I just had it at 2.4 Billion last I reported here on this blog, at the end of Q3, so yeah, 2.6 Billion sounds just about perfectly correct haha.  What is the total count of phones in use, smart and dumb? Portio counted total phones in 2015 to be 6.1 Billion devices. But Cisco counted it a different way, they said it as 42% of all phones in use. Lets try to count how much is 2.6 Billion out of 6.1 Billion? Yep. Its the same number.. 42%. Thats the global migration rate of the installed base of mobile phones, four out of ten worldwide are smartphones. More than 3 out of 4 in the USA and more than 95% here in Hong Kong already.

6 BILLION NOW USE SMS

So then lets take the biggest data application on the planet. Many were saying Whatsapp was killing SMS. Whatsapp has just passed the 1 Billion user milestone a few weeks ago. So how was SMS doing? Did it die? Portio has its latest count out for 2015 and SMS user base.. grew. Sorry folks, I was right again and the clueless American business and tech writers who hyped about Whatsapp were once again mesmerized by a useless stat - the number of messages sent, rather than the number of ACTIVE USERS. Yes, Portio said SMS active user base today is at .. 6.1 Billion people !!! Duh (told-you-so). Portio also counted MMS user base which is yes, bigger than the total internet. The planet's second largest data service by active users, MMS has 3.5 Billion active users at the end of 2015. (Duh!)

INTERNET ON MOBILE

So then lets look at the use of the internet on mobile phones. This is not only smartphones, also 'featurephones' aka dumbphones can be used to access the internet but obviously most who do access the web on a phone, will do so on a smartphone. Ofcom, the UK regulator of telecoms and media does annual comparative surveys of the major advanced economies that are comparable to Britain. They found that in 2015 the level of internet use on mobile phones has passed 80% of total population in Italy and Spain. Britain, France, Germany, Japan and Australia have passed 60%. And the USA is already past 50% of total population who use the internet on a mobile phone, either smart or dumbphone. 

SMS AHEAD OF VOICE

The study reconfirms the same finding they've had before, that SMS text messaging continues as the most used mobile service across the major countries that UK is compared to, with voice calls coming in second. Next come a tight group where individual countries will be in varying positions but the three next most popular services on mobile phones are email, social media and instant messaging. Picture messaging and MMS comes behind those but ahead of VOIP calls like Skype and videocalling.

So thats a quick look into the major stats of our industry. More as we find some in various sources.

Meanwhile, for those who need all the mobile stats in one place, on a convenient ebook that is formated for your smartphone screen. Over 100 charts and tables of ever mobile industry stat you ever wanted, check out the 2015 edition of the TomiAhonen Almanac, which you can order at this page (it still shows older version but obviously I will ship you the latest edition). TomiAhonen Almanac 200 page ebook here.

And those who really want to know what is happening NEXT in mobile, they go to the most accurate forecaster of the mobile industry. My latest forecast came out last year and gives you all the numbers up to year 2018. Get the TomiAhonen Mobile Forecast here.

Comments

[abdul muis]

@Tomi

I wonder if this might be interesting for you:
http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160222005526/en/Global-Operators-Google-GSMA-Align-Adoption-Rich

GSM Association along with Google and Global Operator just announce something that can be called SMS 2.0

[suvi-tuuli reenkola]

Intresting

[Per "wertigon" Ekström]

@Tomi: How is the Q4 2015 / full year 2015 report coming along? I know you are doing it just for your own amusement but would be nice to finally put an end to 2015... :)

[Tomi T Ahonen]

To all in this thread

I have just published VERY rare regional mobile stats, based on analysis and extrapolation of today's Pew global survey of mobile and smartphone ownership. Note that it suggests Cisco's count of 4.8B is a bit too low (5.0B uniques instead). Enjoy!

Tomi Ahonen :-)

[Wayne Borean]

A bit off-topic, but do you have figures for which how many phones are GSM, LTE, CDMA, and whatever?