ABI Research said that about 3.8 billion mobile handsets in 2015, constituting more than 60% of the installed base of mobile handsets worldwide and double the penetration rate today, will be internet enabled.
The researcher said that the falling cost of applications processors is contributing to the growth of full Internet browsers in higher-end feature phones. Proxy-based (or client-server or compression) browser, epitomised by the Opera Mini, are allowing the browser to run on lower-cost processors, requiring just 4 Mb of memory, enabling these browsers to be used on even the low-cost phones.
Mark Beccue, senior analyst at ABI Research, said: "On one hand, highly sophisticated browsers, which we are calling full Internet browsers, will be found in all smartphones and a growing number of enhanced phones.
"Such devices can host these browsers because they have advanced application processors, expanded memory capacity and adequate screen size and resolution. These full Internet browsers typically require about 64 Mb of memory to run."
The New York based market analyst said that the installed base of full Internet browsers will exceed that of proxy-based browsers sometime in 2012.
