By 2020 90% of Children Over Six Years Old Will Have Mobile Phones

Ericsson's latest Mobility Report has revealed that by 2020, approximately 90 per cent of children over six years old will have their own mobile phones.

Ericsson's Mobility Report is derived from studying global trends in mobile phone usage and networks, reported the Daily Mail.

Rima Qureshi, Senior Vice President and Chief Strategy Officer at Ericsson said: "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.

"The Ericsson Mobility Report shows that in 2020 the world will be connected like never before."

In other predictions, the total number of people owning smart phones is expected to exceed 6.1 billion within the next six years.

Presently the figure rests at 2.7 billion.

Regional differences are also expected to be more prominent in the coming years with sales in Europe expected to reach 95 per cent by 2020 with the Middle East peaking at 55 per cent.

It is expected that most of the smart phones will be used to watch videos. Hence, video traffic is expected to increase tenfold by 2020, accounting for 55 per cent of the overall mobile data traffic.

The future of smart phones and children

Since the smart phones will be predominately used to watch videos, they are expected to evolve into having larger screens, higher resolution and better streaming quality, reported the Daily Mail.

A new survey by BullGuard has also predicted that due to the prevalence of gadgets, social media sites, like Facebook and Instagram, and Google, children of the next generation will mature faster than the earlier generations.

An estimated 77 per cent of parents who participated in the survey said they believed their children are growing up too fast, blaming the predicament on the access children have to the internet.