According to the Global System for Mobile Communications Association (GSMA) real time intelligence data, there are now over 10,328 mobile connections worldwide, which surpasses the current world population of about 7.8 billion. It seems that a lot of people own more than one mobile device.
So what are we doing across those connections? According to Ericsson's GSMA intelligence report: The Mobile Economy 2019, over 75% of users in developed markets are reading the news even more than they are communicating on social networks. Interesting isn't it? Smart phone ubiquity across the world enables consumer engagement in numerous use cases.
We are highly dependent on our mobile devices, and that's unlikely to change. Infact, it's going to increase if the World Advertising Research Centre (WARC) is right. WARC forecasts that by 2025, 72% of all internet users will only use smartphones to access the web.
One would expect that kind of demand on our infrastructure would come at a high environmental cost. And it's not a wrong assumption. According to the December 2019 Enablement Effect Study produced in collaboration between GSMA and Carbon Trust (an independent sustainability specialist), the total annual GHG emissions of the mobile sector accounts for about 0.4% of total global emissions.
But mobile devices aren't all bad. Infact, according to the joint study, mobile helped reduce over 2 billion tons of carbon dioxide emission in 2018 across a range of categories emission savings that were ten times greater than the global carbon footprint of the mobile industry itself.
Nice article.