In 2014 the next billion will access the mobile internet -- at $20 a handset

In 2013 smartphones outsold feature phones, and the dean of Silicon Valley tech investing, Marc Andreessen, says that within three years you simply won’t be able to buy a non-smartphone. We won’t exceed 3.5 billion smartphone subscriptions until 2016. The total number of mobile subscriptions, however, will exceed 7 billion by 2014, according to the International Telecommunications Union. Meanwhile, the total number of mobile phone numbers will also be growing, and will exceed the number of people on earth thanks to countries like India, where many people have more than one phone to take advantage of price variations in different places.

Of course, a smartphone isn’t nearly as useful if you don’t have a data connection good enough for browsing the web, downloading apps, streaming music and video, and using maps. Only 30% of the world’s 7 billion mobile subscriptions included mobile broadband in 2013, says the ITU. But according to some estimates, most mobile subscribers will likely be internet-connected within the next decade. In 2014, the smartphone and tablet industry will take big strides in that direction: Usable smartphones manufactured in the motherland of cheap electronics, Shenzhen, will be had for $20, at least in China. With phones and tablets that cheap, the bottleneck for most people won’t be their device, but the cost and quality of mobile access.