Six Billion Cell Phone Subscribers

Less than a decade ago, no one thought that we could connect the whole globe’s population in less than a decade.  At best it would and must take decades to grind our way through thickened veins of primitive economies.  Instead, the real demand at even that economic level changed everything.

Most importantly, a cacao farmer today can get the price of cacao in the town thirty miles away, negotiate a deal and set of to deliver his sold crop.  It was a revolution eagerly sought and eagerly supported.

As important, the whole developing world jumped past the whole technology evolution we all lived through and avoided the natural wastage we paid for.

The direct result is that an economic revolution is taking place from the ground up, almost out of sight unless you go out in the field to look.  The roads are probably still lousy but everyone now knows how to improve their personal environment and are visibly working on it.  The advent of micro finance has also begun to provide cash liquidity at all levels also.  All this is driven by the cell phone connectiveness.

We can now predict that the whole global population will achieve middle class status with the benefits of universal education and all the appropriate services we expect inside the next two generations or forty years.  This pretty well conforms to earlier predictions I made based on pure economic momentum.  The cell phone difference is that it is now driven by pure demand and governments heave no chance to stall the process as we have had in the past.  The Arab Spring is a powerful reminder of that.

More than 6 billion Global mobile connections by November 2011

OCTOBER 12, 2011

http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/10/more-than-6-billion-global-mobile.html

Wireless Intelligence estimates that the 6 billion milestone will be reached in late November and that total global connections will end the year at 6.07 billion. The last 1 billion connections were added in just 16 months. 

The world population (of people) will reach 7 billion in October 2011.

The global mobile penetration rate will be 86 percent, up from 74 percent at the 5 billion connections point.

China is forecast to hit the 1 billion mobile connections milestone in May 2012.
India's wireless population is about 600 million subscribers in 2011. Previous estimates had included about 250 million inactive accounts. 

Digitimes Research projects Apple to take the top spot among global smartphone vendors for the entire calendar year of 2011, leading the way with nearly 19% of the market at 86.4 million units. Apple is projected to easily top Nokia, whose shipments appear set to drop 25% to under 75 million.

The total number of smartphones shipped in 2011 is projected to be 462 million.

ABI Research projects number of 4G smartphones being shipped annually is expected to hit 245 million in 2016, compared with just 4.6 million last year.