Four billion people, or half the world's population, will communicate using mobile phones by 2015, up from the 1.3 billion or so who have them now, the industry's top executive predicted today.
By 2008, the world will already have two billion mobile users, said Jorma Ollila, chairman and chief executive of Finland's Nokia, which makes about two out of every five name-brand handsets worldwide.
'Mobile communication has the potential to give access to communications to half of the world's population by 2015. This will mean roughly four billion,' Ollila said in a keynote speech to the 3GSM World Congress, an annual industry event.
Most of the growth in the mobile phone industry will come for basic voice communications in emerging markets, especially China, India, Indonesia, Brazil and Russia, he said.China outpaced the US as the world's largest market for mobile phones almost two years ago.
Ollila said that, in developed countries where mobile phone penetration is already high, wireless communications will overtake fixed-line communications in terms of the volume of voice call traffic. This is already the case in Italy, the Czech Republic and Portugal, he said.
