Eight billion people will use smartphones and 100 billion terminals will be interconnected via the internet by 2025, according to Chinese ICT multinational Huawei.
This is an eight-fold increase in the number of smartphone users – one billion – today.
Speaking at the firm's annual global analyst summit, ?William Xu, Chief Strategy and Marketing Officer, Huawei, said, "Mobile has changed everything…the world cannot move on without connectivity. We increasingly rely on it to enable our work and lives, and we expect ubiquitous, high-speed, secure, no-wait connections."
In his opening address he told attendees: "ICT is propelling society into the next wave of development. Connection has become a new element of production alongside land, labour and capital."
Xu said: "Companies have to adopt these new technologies or become redundant.
"We will see machines connected with machines on a massive scale. For example, there will be connected cars with insurance informed by technology that monitors driving habits. Everything and everyone will be connected through cloud computing: hotel rooms, cinema seats, classrooms."
"An era of massive traffic is around the corner. And we need to figure out how to transmit, handle and analyse huge volumes of data," Xu added.
Pointing to a 'connectivity index', Xu explained that connectivity is a key indicator of a country's competitiveness. Germany leads the rankings, followed by Chile, which is emerging as an innovation hub within Latin America, partly thanks to its 'Chilecon valley' start-up incubation programme.
Huawei recently reported revenues of ¥239 billion ($38.3 billion) for 2013, up 8.5 percent from the previous year. It recorded a net profit of ¥21 billion ($3.37 billion). Huawei employs 150,000 people globally in over 100 countries and plans to increase its investment in IT by 14 percent in 2014.
