Prediction Held up AI assessment confidence: 95% certainty 4/5 debate potential 2/5

Dixon: Smartphone users will hit 5 billion as hardware drops to $3

Chris Dixon · Company Building in Crypto: A Conversation between Brian Armstrong and Chris Dixon · Dec 21, 2018 · at 24:53

Chris Dixon, General Partner at a16z crypto, discusses smartphone penetration and hardware accessibility for bringing unbanked global populations online.

0:00 / 0:12exact quote · 12.7s

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“You can get a 15 dollar Android phone now. That will come down. You'll be able to get a three dollar phone. It'll probably be like Benedict Evans, who works with us, comes up, he does all these studies on this. It'll be, there'll be something, there's like three and a half billion smartphones. It'll be five billion, like just based on the price charts and everything.”

quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →

The claim, plainly

Chris Dixon predicts global smartphone adoption will grow from 3.5 billion to 5 billion as device prices drop to $3.

a quote alone can be ambiguous, so this restates it with the references and context of the conversation around it resolved. AI-written; the tape below the player is the source.

Assessment

The resolution criteria specifies that the target of 5 billion is met if either the global number of active smartphone users OR active smartphone devices reaches 5 billion on or before December 21, 2023, as measured by major industry sources. According to IDC and secondary analytics sources, the active global smartphone installed base (active devices) surpassed 5 billion well before December 2023, reaching approximately 6.0 billion active devices in 2023 (and up to 6.97 billion total connections/devices). Although unique individual human smartphone owners remained around 4.3 billion according to GSMA Intelligence, the 'or devices' condition of the resolution criteria was met.

IDC and Counterpoint Research estimated the global active smartphone installed base reached ~6.0 billion active devices by 2023.
Statista/BankMyCell tracked active smartphone devices/connections at 6.97 billion in 2023.
GSMA Intelligence reported 4.3 billion unique smartphone owners and 4.7 billion mobile internet users in 2023.

Checked against

[1] gsma.com [2] gsma.com [3] gsmaintelligence.com [4] gsma.com [5] techlusive.in [6] gartner.com [7] mckinsey.com [8] researchgate.net

"Ericsson Mobility Report" 2023 smartphone subscriptions OR active devices "Gartner" active smartphone installed base OR users 2023 billion "GSMA Intelligence" "smartphone users" OR "smartphone adoption" 2023 2024 billion active smartphone users world 2023 Statista GSMA IDC number of global smartphone users 2023 5 billion "Counterpoint" active smartphone installed base 2023 billion "IDC" active smartphone users OR devices installed base 2023 billion "Gartner" smartphone users devices 2023 billion global active smartphone users 2023 GSMA Intelligence IDC Gartner "Statista" global smartphone users 2023 billion

assessed as of 2026-07-28

This assessment is an AI reading of a public statement, made against the cited references with the confidence shown. It can be wrong. The quote, the tape and the references are all on this page; if something is off, use report an error below. full disclaimer →

Mentioned

Benedict Evans Chris Dixon smartphone

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