Data to back it up please, since you are pretty sure?

"Around 70% of customers in Western Europe and China use prepaid phones with the figure rising to over 90% for customers in India and Africa"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prepay_mobile_phone

I only know people with contracts regarding iPhone, which is the only affordable way to get them new in many of the European countries.

    > while in Europe the proportion is 50%, reaching 75% in
    > Northwestern Europe as compared to 40% in South-Eastern
    > European states.

https://www.globalrewardsolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/GRS...

Data is from 2015. Given the overall trend I wouldn't be surprised if even more people have switched to contract by now.

Thanks. I do confess as south-european that probably my reality is a bit biased, as you can still see on the report.

But I do agree from 2012 to 2015 it did change in the direction you meant.

That data is from 2012. I don’t have any feeling for what it currently is (most people I know are on contract, but that’s specifically the people I know), so it would be good to see up to date data.

I know, but it was the only one I could quickly find out.

As teamhappy pointed out, I am kind of wrong, as the data did indeed change for contracts, but was is still low in 2015 regarding southern countries, the ones I tend to visit regularly.

But it would still be nice to know if someone can point out to 2017 data.

China is cited by an OP. No serious options in China for contract phone.

What has become super common is for home cable provider to provide SIM with around 2G of data in order to pay monthly broadband charge. SIM recharge being easier than vanilla broadband recharge.