15 Countries that Have the Largest Number of Smartphone Users in the World

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For the past decade, the popularity of the smartphone has grown exponentially, the number of users growing day by day, with some people owning more than one, so we thought to check out the countries that have the largest number of smartphone users.  Increasing smartphone adoption rates is partially driving the stock movements of companies like Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL), Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ:GOOGL), Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB), and Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT).

It is already estimated, as per Statista, that the number of smartphone users in the world in 2017 has reached 2.32 billion, although that estimation may very well be off given how many people choose to buy more than one of these devices, thanks to plans offered by telcos. By comparison, the smartphone usage statistics for 2016 indicate there were “only” about 2.1 billion users last year.

The number of mobile phone users in the world, however, is double that, gearing to surpass 5 billion this year, shows data from the GSMA.

So, which country has the largest number of cell phones? Well, that’s easy, because almost everyone in China has access to a mobile phone, whether smartphone or other, an estimated 1.321 billion out of the 1.37 billion citizens.

In the years to come, smartphone powered by Alphabet’s Android, Apple’s iOS, or Microsoft’s Windows Phone, are only going to become more popular. The numbers are set to only grow from here until most of the population carries a small computer in their pocket. Smartphone sales by country are expected to remain somewhat constant in regards to the nations where most shipments are headed – China, India and the United States leading the chart.

Since we’re talking about popular smartphones, Samsung is one of the main producer of Android-powered smartphones. So, if you’re interested, you might also enjoy reading up about the 25 countries where Samsung Galaxy Smartphones have the largest market share.

But what are the smartphone ownership statistics like? Well, they have a tight connection to the economic stability of the country, the availability of Internet and more. In order to create our list today we took at look at Newzoo’s global mobile market report from April 2017, which is the most recent set of data currently available. What you’ll notice in the report is smartphone ownership by country is tightly linked to the number of citizens. While the smartphone penetration rate may vary from nation to nation, it’s still interesting to see which nation has the most users. That being said, here are the 15 countries that have the largest number of smartphone users.

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