Sovereign and dependent territory rows of the World Bank “Mobile cellular subscriptions (per 100 people)” indicator (top 30 by most recent year). Multi-SIM use can push values above 100. Aggregates (region.id === “NA”) excluded.
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How to use this chart
Play/Pause starts and stops the year-by-year animation, the year slider jumps to any year, and the speed selector (0.5×, 1×, 2×) changes playback speed. Each year shows the top 12 entries out of the 30 held in the dataset.
About this ranking
About this metric. “Mobile Subscriptions by Country (Time Series)” reformats data published by the World Bank (World Bank indicator code IT.CEL.SETS.P2). Values are expressed in per 100 people.
What to watch. Watch African countries vault straight past the landline era into mobile through the 2000s — the textbook “leapfrog”. And note how many bars exceed 100 per 100 people: dual SIMs and work phones make this the rare adoption metric that overshoots its own ceiling.
Caveats. Subscriptions count SIM lines, not people: dual handsets, work phones and tourist prepaids inflate the figure, and a country can drop sharply the year dormant prepaid lines are purged from the registers. Values above 100 mean more lines than residents — nothing more.
Trends in the data
There is an obviously anomalous value at the right-hand end of this table. Fiji read 111.75 subscriptions per 100 people in 2022, then 361.05 in 2023 and 574.15 in 2024 — 5.1× in two years. At 574 per 100 people, each resident holds an average of 5.7 lines. Mobile phones do not become five times more common in two years; a change in how dormant lines are counted, or in the scope of the survey, is the likelier explanation. The 209-point gap to second-placed Hong Kong at 364.85 makes it an outlier even among the leaders.
Exceeding 100, though, is entirely normal here. All 24 countries with a 2024 value are above 150, down to Morocco at 153.06. The count is of SIM lines, not people, so second devices, work lines and prepaid cards sold to tourists all add in. “Above 100” carries no meaning by itself; only the relative standing between countries is worth comparing.
The left-hand edge is more extreme still: from 1960 to the mid-1980s all 30 countries read 0.00. The first values above zero appear in the late 1980s, and the 1989 leader is Hong Kong at 1.55, followed by the UAE at 1.39, Kuwait 1.02 and Singapore 0.89 — roughly one person in a hundred. By 2007 Hong Kong is at 154.23 and Macao at 152.09, a hundredfold increase in under twenty years.
Coverage varies by year: 25 countries in 1960, 24 in 1989, 29 in 2007 and 24 in 2024. Years with all 30 are rare. Japan’s most recent value is 178.43 in 2023, ninth among the 27 countries reporting that year; it has no 2024 value and so is not among the latest year’s 24. The countries at the top are those with heavy tourism or large migrant workforces, which makes this less a measure of how many residents own phones than of how many SIMs are issued in a given place.
Trivia quiz
Why do some countries exceed 100 mobile subscriptions per 100 people?
Because people hold multiple lines/SIMs (work and personal, data-only). Subscriptions count lines, not people. (Source)
What is the term for developing countries skipping fixed-line phones and adopting mobile directly?
Leapfrogging — adopting a newer technology without passing through the older infrastructure stage. (Source)
Which Kenyan service made mobile money transfers more widespread than bank accounts, boosting financial inclusion?
M-Pesa, which lets users send money by SMS and reaches people without bank accounts. (Source)
Source
World Bank — Mobile cellular subscriptions (per 100 people) (IT.CEL.SETS.P2)