China, India, Malaysia and New Zealand leading the world in smartphone growth

The unstoppable momentum of smartphones is almost single-handedly driving the extraordinary growth in new Internet users around the world.

More importantly, the Asia Pacific (APAC) region is responsible for the lion's share of that growth – namely China, India, Malaysia and New Zealand.

That's according to the report recently released by Adobe, based on the global analysis of 1.7 trillion visits to more than 16,000 websites between January 2014 and 2017 – smartphones were the source of a whopping 500 million new Internet users globally.

Nearly all the growth in traffic to the internet can be attributed to smartphones, according to senior Adobe Digital Insights analyst Trevor Jones.

As an example, smartphone traffic in India has increased by 290 per cent since 2014, while desktop traffic is down 6 per cent, while tablet traffic is steady at 3 per cent growth.

"Desktop and tablet traffic is stagnant or shrinking in the vast majority of APAC countries," Jones says.

Jones affirms that China, India, Malaysia and New Zealand are the countries to watch for big growth in smartphone penetration.

"These countries are not showing any signs of slowing down over the course of 2017," Jones says.

Malaysia and New Zealand have historically lagged behind their APAC counterparts in terms of mobile growth, but both countries are poised to break 40 percent smartphone penetration by 2018.

Biggest opportunities lie in China and India

The report from Adobe provides the most comprehensive roadmap of mobile internet traffic in the world today and Jones has no doubt that most roads lead to India and China.

"The biggest opportunities lie in India and China, both of which are experiencing huge growth, yet large amounts of their population remain untouched," Jones says.

"Every percentage change in share of traffic or traffic growth has a much bigger impact in these countries. India and China still have millions of people that have yet to access the internet, therefore they are the markets where growth will be the easiest to attain.