I'm a big fan of We are Social who publish a yearly in-depth review of the onward march of the mobile social internet. The reason is that you can see how things are changing. For example, in their 2012 stats, mobile subscriptions are highly active across the world ...
... but Africa has a lot of potential.
Three years later and you can see that potential starting to be realised ...
Although these are not mobile users, but subscriptions and we should remember that some folks have two or three phones plus tablet computers.
If you look at unique mobile users the figures are less, but still impressive.
So less than two billion people are actively using mobile services today, but that will change. According to the GSMA there will a billion more mobile users over the next five years, and these users will primarily be in these emerging regions of trade, commerce and finance. They will also be social, as the main reason for getting a phone is to stay connected with friends and family.
Most people think their phones are more important than sex ...
... but then that's no surprise.
But then you find a rapidly emerging mobile payments world as illustrated well by this Infographic from Purefunds Mobile Payments ETF (IPAY):
Chris M Skinner
Chris Skinner is best known as an independent commentator on the financial markets through his blog, TheFinanser.com, as author of the bestselling book Digital Bank, and Chair of the European networking forum the Financial Services Club. He has been voted one of the most influential people in banking by The Financial Brand (as well as one of the best blogs), a FinTech Titan (Next Bank), one of the Fintech Leaders you need to follow (City AM, Deluxe and Jax Finance), as well as one of the Top 40 most influential people in financial technology by the Wall Street Journal's Financial News. To learn more click here...
