Only 11 percent of Pakistanis own smartphones

A new report on smartphone ownership statistics in 40 nations around the globe has found out that only 11 percent of Pakistanis own smartphones. More worryingly, nearly half of all people in Pakistan don’t even own a cell phone.

The Pew Research Center, a non-profit research organization based in American, analyzed smartphone ownership figures based on a survey of 40 nations in Spring of 2015. According to their report, the global average of adult smartphone ownership was 43%.

While developed countries like South Korea and Australia peaked the charts with 88% and 77% smartphone ownership respectively, most Asian countries didn’t even get over the 50 percent threshold. Unsurprisingly, there is a big correlation in richer economies and the number of population owning a smartphone.

Smartphone users in Pakistan

Even though there has been an influx of smartphones in Pakistan and a lot of Chinese and even Pakistani manufacturers have popped up to hop on the smartphone bandwagon, the country still has a long way to go.

In Pakistan, only 11 percent of the whole population owns a smartphone.

There is an 8 percent increase since the last survey in 2014 but it is still no way near 42 percentage point increase in smartphone ownership in Turkey – the fastest growing smartphone economy currently.

However, the more interesting thing was that 44 percent of the population still doesn’t have a cellphone, let alone a smartphone.

The smartphone digital divide is real but the gap is slowly closing. In 2015 alone, 1.4 billion smartphones and they show no sign of stopping down so the gap is likely going to be closed down in the upcoming years. The recent introduction of 3G and 4G services in Pakistan has also helped a lot in convincing more people to buy smartphones.