Smartphones to reach 40 Million mark in Pakistan by this year

The new reports and market trends have suggested that the smartphone user base of Pakistan is yet bound to grow and reach 8% mark in coming years, and that the magnitude will be more or less 40 million within a couple of months.

The current number of 3G and 4G users in Pakistan stands at around 30 million and is constantly changing. The number stood at 14.6 million smartphones as of July 2015 but seems to have doubled just in one year. The reports also throw light on how the e-commerce industry of Pakistan has grown to take significant share from the conventional retail trade. Being only over 5% of total, the ecommerce trades have reached valuation of $100 million, a straight two-third increase from $60 million in 2014.

Annual report from GFK said that the global smartphone industry will be growing by 6.6% this year, mainly due to the evolving Chinese smartphone sector. The developing markets including Emerging Asia had even greater expansion rate at about 8%. The total sales are expected to sum to $421.8 billion, as compared to $398.1 billion last year. The greatest value of sales happened in China which pitched in $131.2 billion to the total.

The 3G/4G auction proved to be a major differentiating factor between the numbers of smartphones on Pakistan which has increased quite enormously. Recently, Pakistan was 6th on the list of top smartphone markets for growth by value. Pakistan Telecommunication Authority has time and again pointed how the smartphone sales spiked following the auction. One such indication showed that growth of over 1900% was witnessed in the number broadband subscriptions during June 2014 to July 2016. The total data consumed on mobile networks also augmented from 1,964 TBs in month of June 2014 to 39,821 TBs in July 2016.

Pakistan had an estimated 125 million mobile subscribers in 2015 while smartphones made up 31% of all phone shipments in Pakistan last year, compared to only 13% in 2013. Pakistan has a larger population percentage bearing smartphones as compared to India.