The divide between emerging and developed markets in terms of smartphone penetration is set to grow wider, new research suggests.
Telecommunications equipment company Ericsson expects that by 2018, almost all handsets in Western Europe and North America will be smartphones compared to only a third in the Middle East, Africa and Asia-Pacific.
Ericsson's latest annual Mobility Report finds that mobile traffic is expected to continue the current trend of doubling each year, driven by increased demand in developed markets and new users of mobile broadband in developing ones.
Moreover, mobile data traffic is predicted to grow far faster than fixed-line data between now and 2018, even though, cumulatively, fixed-line services will still carry greater volumes of data globally. Not surprisingly, mobile data is expected to continue to outstrip fixed-line services in Africa as the primary form of data connection for most people in the region.
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