Nine in ten UK phones sold in 2016 will be smartphones

Owning a feature phone will mark you out as a dangerous insurgent.

A new report Pyramid Research says that by 2016, 90.8 per cent of all handsets sold in the UK will be smartphones.

It adds that this surge will increase mobile data service revenue to £7.7bn. That's a huge windfall for operators, but also a potential headache in terms of making enough network capacity available to keep customers happy.

The rise of the smartphone appears to be fuelling another spike in overall phone ownership. Pyramid reckons mobile penetration in the UK is expected to reach 152.8 per cent by 2016, which is around 98m subscriptions.

Olena Kaplan, Pyramid Research's associate analyst, said:  "The growing demand for simultaneous data access by multiple devices, which will be met by 4G technology following the 4G licence auction in 2012, will result in mobile data service revenue reaching £7.7 billion by 2016."