Smartphone sales expected to boom to 5.6 billion units in 2019

If I was to look around my desks where I'm typing this news, I have a Nexus 5, LG G2, and both Nexus 7 tablets - last years model, and this years - I'm a tech addict like most of you out there. But just how many smartphones are out in the wild right now? Around 1.9 billion, which is expected to blow out to a huge 5.6 billion devices in 2019.

5.6 billion smartphones is a mammoth number, with the estimation coming from communications technology company, Ericsson. According to Ericsson's latest quarterly report, 55% of all handsets sold worldwide were smartphones, even though smartphones represent just 25-30% of all active mobile phone subscriptions.

But, over the next 6 years, we should see smartphone adoption hitting 60% of all mobile phone subscriptions. This means that of the 9.3 billion phones in use by 2019, 5.6 billion (or over half) of them will be smartphones. The biggest reason for this is going to be the emerging markets like China and India, and I personally think another big push is going to be Android 4.4 KitKat, which has much lower minimum requirements - which will push smartphone technology into cheaper smartphones, and help drive sales in emerging markets, in droves.