Smartphone adoption will soon match total population in Brazil

By Lulu Chang April 25, 2017

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While the world’s growing population continues to present a challenge with respect to food and energy production, the smartphone industry seems to be having no trouble keeping pace — at least in Brazil. In that country, it is estimated that this mobile device adoption will match the country’s population in the next two years.

As per new research from Brazilian think tank and university Fundacao Getulio Vargas (FGV), the total number of smartphones in the South American country will hit 236 million sometime between 2020 and 2022. Currently, Brazil’s population stands at just around 208 million people, and already, there are 198 million smartphones in the nation.

What’s the impetus behind this growth? As per FGV professor Fernando Meirelles, a shift in buying patterns is the chief contributor to the increase. At an event in Sao Paulo in which Meirelles presented the team’s research, he noted that younger Brazilians in particular are moving away from desktops and towards smartphones.

Brazil is quite smartphone savvy, and is now the world’s fourth largest mobile phone market. As per a related study, smartphones comprise the mobile phone market in Brazil.

Even though Brazil has actually recently experienced a decline in smartphone sales as a result of a 2016 economic crisis, that doesn’t seem like a trend that will last. Just last month, Counterpoint Research pointed out that the market was already on the rise. “Although the smartphone market declined 16 percent year-over-year in the fourth quarter of 2016, it grew 15 percent sequentially after shipments hit a trough in the third quarter of 2016,” Business Insider reported.

Indeed, smartphone adoption across the world is on the rise, with users across the world checking their devices a whopping one billion times a day more than they did a year ago.

So look out, friends. We may not be taken over by aliens or apes, but smartphones could be a cause for concern.

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Former Digital Trends Contributor

Fascinated by the effects of technology on human interaction, Lulu believes that if her parents can use your new app…

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