Interesting report in PC World. It seems that cell subscriptions have reached 3.3 billion, which is half the world’s population. Of course, this can be a bit misleading. We know our share of people who have two cell phones, and hell, we know one or two who tote around three devices. This comes in 26 years after we first saw a cell network launched.
“The mobile industry has constantly outperformed even the most optimistic forecasts for subscriber growth,” Mark Newman, head of research at Informa said in a statement.
This growth is being made possible by emerging markets in the world’s two most populated countries, China and India. They’re booming over there as the U.S. did when cell service hit the mainstream.
But although mobile subscriptions have reached the equivalent of 50 percent of the population, this does not mean that half the people in the world now have a mobile phone, since Informa said 59 countries have mobile penetration of over 100 percent — where some owners have more than one phone.
We’d love to see countries that have 100 percent penetration. It has to be big enough to warrant a cell service, but small enough that it’s feasible that nearly all of the population has a phone. With the continued growth in Asia, we could see this number continue to grow rapidly. [PC World]
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