From htxt.africa

Cheaper components and smarter phones have helped to keep more people in contact with one another, be it through a feature phone or a smartphone. But how many phones are there is Africa?

Technology and ICT provider Ericsson knows. It says that Africa has almost a billion mobile phone subscribers – 910 million to be exact. For the first quarter of the year alone, the continent has added 21 million new subscriptions.

According to Ericsson’s Mobility Report, “by 2020 advanced mobile technology will be commonplace around the globe: smartphone subscriptions will more than double, reaching 6.1 billion, 70% of the world’s population will be using smartphones, and 90 percent will be covered by mobile broadband networks.”

That is a lot of mobile devices.

And reiterating the point that cheaper components have made more purchases possible, it explained that 80% of the smartphones in the market by 2020 will be from developing regions such as Asia Pacific, the Middle East, and Africa.

With more device connected to various networks, mobile data will naturally also increase. Ericsson estimates that smartphone data is set to increase ten-fold by 2020, with 80% of the data traffic stemming from smartphones.

Read more at htxt.africa