Page 120 - The Fourth Industrial Revolution

Shift 6: A Supercomputer in Your Pocket

The tipping point: 90% of the population using smart phones
By 2025: 81% of respondents expected this tipping point will have occurred
Already in 2012, the Google Inside Search team published that “it takes about the same amount of
computing to answer one Google Search query as all the computing done – in flight and on the ground
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– for the entire Apollo programme!” Moreover, current smart phones and tablets contain more
computing power than many of the formerly known supercomputers, which used to fill an entire room.
Global smart phone subscribers are anticipated to total 3.5 billion by 2019; that will equate to 59%
smart phone penetration by population, surpassing the 50% penetration of 2017 and underlining the
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significant growth from the 28% level in 2013. In Kenya, Safaricom, the leading mobile service
operator, reported that 67% of handset sales were smart phones in 2014, and the GSMA forecasts that
Africa will have over half a billion smart phone users by 2020. 86
The shift in devices has already occurred in many countries across different continents (with Asia
leading the trend today), as more people are using their smart phones rather than traditional PCs. As
technology is progressing to miniaturize devices, increase computing power and, especially, decrease
the price of electronics, smart phone adoption will only accelerate.

According to Google, the countries in Figure II have a higher usage of smart phones than PCs.

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