Top 10 Countries For The Mobile Web

Pakistan ranked the lowest among those surveyed, with just 4% of smartphone users going online with their devices. In fact, the overall number of smartphone owners using their phones to go online is low, at a median 26% in the 18 countries surveyed.

Why not more? Data plans in most countries can still be costly, and neither is 3G and 2G reception always reliable. Several of the issues Scott Karp put in his 2007 article, “Five Reasons Why The Mobile Web Sucks” are still around today, including the hidden costs of public WiFi access and slow wireless carrier networks.

Assuming wireless speeds and infrastructure improve, there should be a flood of people starting to access the internet through their smartphones over the next year or so in emerging markets. Smartphones are getting cheaper, with more than 50% of smartphones sold in 2017 set to cost less than $150, according to another recent study by research group Informa. Many smartphones that run on Google Android, like Samsung’s Galaxy range, start at $200. Yet even those price points have yet to capture the huge growth of smartphone users in emerging markets.

Hence why Chinese smartphone and tablet makers like ZTE are making cheaper smartphones, along with India’s Datawind, which claims its $40 Ubislate 7ci is the cheapest tablet in the world. Datawind aims to sell its tablet to students for $20. CEO Singh Tuli has said prices for most tablets will tank next year as factories in China ramp up production of cheaper LCD touch panels, which are used for tablet screens.

The bottom line: around five billion people in the world have a cell phone subscription, but only 2 billion people are connected to the Internet. Once they can get an affordable device and data plan, they’ll be online. too