eMarketer has published its latest forecasts for global internet and mobile user numbers for 2017 to 2021. Currently, 3.46 billion people worldwide use the internet at least once a month, equivalent to 46.8% of the global population. By 2021, this figure is set to grow to 4.14 billion people, or 53.7% of the world's population. Much of this growth is to come from an increase in the number of internet-enabled mobile phones in emerging markets in regions such as Africa, the Middle East, Latin America, the Asia Pacific, and Central and Eastern Europe. In 2017, mobile internet users totalled 2.73 billion people worldwide, with the majority of these people using a smartphone, rather than a feature phone, to access the web.Â
