Informa the industry analyst for telecoms, has just reported on 29 Nov that the mobile telecoms industry has reached the 3.3 billion subscription level. As the planet's population is 6.6 billion, this means that there is a mobile phone subscrption for half the planet, as reported by Total Telecom.
UDATE Dec 10 2008 - I've just published my annual statistical review about the overall size of the mobile industry for end-of-year 2008. All new numbers so if you are interested in the "big picture", you may want to read this blog entitled Trillion with a T: Newest Giant Industry is Mobile
NOTE - that blog covers all of the topics in this, older blog posting, so unless you want to read about the history of mobile, I suggest you hop over to the newer blog where the current numbers are discussed.
A few observations - note the speed of subcriber growth is NOT SLOWING DOWN. We were at 2.7 billion subscribers at the end of 2006. Many of the pundits and experts who don't really understand mobile telecoms, looked at the industry last year and promised this year the growth would slow down. It didn't. The growth in fact accelerated.
Secondly, a subscription count is not a count of mobile phone users. As we've said here many times before, there is an increasing number of multiple subscriptions in the world (more than 28% of all phone owners have two or more subscriptions by earlier Informa numbers released this year). A good indicator of that is Informa's latest count that now we have 59 countries where mobile phone density exceeds the human population (per capita mobile phones more than 100%). So out of the 3.3 billion subscriptions, how many different people actually own one or more phone subscriptions, that number is about 2.55 billion now at the end of 2007.
Still amazing numbers compared to other technologies such as the 1.5 billion people who own a credit card or TV set, the approx 1.3 billion who now have an internet connection etc. If you would like to read an analysis of comparisons of the various technologies, check out our blog from about a year ago.
Mobile / commodity based computing is where is everything is happening - to state the obvious.
The question is: will this encourage innovation in UI and usability? Will market leaders invest capital into R&D. Sadly user feedback is simply interpreted as "more features + lower price = coolness".
Or will phones remain like PCs - disposable objects made with little regard to * how * we would like to stay in touch?
Btw, have you thought of adding PDF versions of your posts (text body only)?
Posted by: Andrew | December 04, 2007 at 06:12 AM
I like what you have said,it is really helpful to me,thanks!
Posted by: cheap jewelry | August 21, 2011 at 05:18 AM
著者の軍事Xiliu昨日のブログ記事はjinzhengenの判決は、韓国人は経済発展の中国の深セン経済特区のモデルから学ぶために、貧困の顔を変更するには、主導し、言った。
Posted by: ノースフェイス | February 17, 2012 at 02:26 AM
亘理町によると、荒浜地区の堤防沿いは町の集団移転の対象となる「移転促進区域」に含まれていない地域も多く、建築制限もかかっていない。このため流失を免れた自宅の修復を終えた住民もいる。
Posted by: グッチ | February 27, 2012 at 01:47 AM
Excellent, what a webpage it is! This webpage gives valuable data to us, keep it up.
Posted by: IMVU Free Credits | November 23, 2013 at 12:14 AM