The mobile revolution is moving forward at full throttle. According to the latest Ericsson Mobility Report, nine out of 10 people over the age of six will have a mobile phone by 2020.
During the third quarter of 2014, roughly 65-70 percent of all phones sold were smartphones - up from just 55 percent during the year-ago quarter. Ericsson expects to see 800 million new smartphone subscriptions by the end of 2014, bringing the total worldwide count to 2.7 billion units.
Smartphones currently account for just 37 percent of all mobile phone subscriptions which indicates there's still plenty of users that have yet to make the switch from feature phones. By 2020, the report predicts there will be 6.1 billion smartphones in use globally.
In a statement on the matter, Rima Qureshi, Senior Vice President, Chief Strategy Officer and Head of M&A at Ericsson said the falling cost of handsets, coupled with improved usability and increasing network coverage, are factors that are making mobile technology a global phenomenon that will soon be available to the vast majority of the world's population, regardless of age or location.
Unsurprisingly, Ericsson's report notes that video continues to dominate mobile networks. Video constitutes as much as 55 percent of mobile traffic on 4G networks thanks largely in part to the rise of streaming video services and the improved experience that large-screen devices afford.