More than 90% of people over the age of six will own a mobile phone by 2020, and there will be an estimated 6.1 billion smartphone subscribers by this time, Ericsson projects.
The company's latest Mobility Report estimates that there have been 800 million new smartphone subscriptions worldwide in 2014, bringing the total to 2.7 billion.
But this accounts for only 37% of the world's total mobile phone subscriptions, leaving plenty of room for growth in the sector, Ericsson said.
China and India are the fastest growing markets, with 18 million and 12 million net additions, respectively, in the third quarter alone.
In the North East Asia region, there are an estimated 1.57 billion mobile subscribers, with over 1 billion of these using smartphones. By 2020 the total number of subscribers is expected to hit 2.1 billion, with 1.8 billion smartphone users.
In South East Asia and Oceania by contrast there are 995 million mobile subscribers today but only 224 million are smartphone users. By 2020, there ill be an estimated 1.3 billion mobile customers and 810 million smartphone subscribers.
“The falling cost of handsets, coupled with improved usability and increasing network coverage, are factors that are making mobile technology a global phenomenon that will soon be available to the vast majority of the world's population, regardless of age or location,” Ericsson SVP and head of M&A Rima Qureshi said.
“The Ericsson Mobility Report shows that in 2020 the world will be connected like never before.”