Communities Dominate Brands: Putting 2.7 billion in context: Mobile phone users

Communities Dominate Brands: Putting 2.7 billion in context: Mobile phone users:

This is a great article comparing mobile growth to other major industry sectors such as car ownership, do give the whole thing a read... but here's the take-away:

"SO HERE IS THE BIG PICTURE

2.7 Billion phones in active use. There is a subscription for 40% of the planet's population. Maybe 10% of those are multiple subscriptions (in Europe and Industrialized Asia mostly) so perhaps 2.4 Billion people or 36% of the planet's population actually carry at least one phone.

During 2006 they sold about 950 million mobile phones. More phones sold last year than the total installed base of personal computers in use. Out of the 950 phones sold last year, two in three had built-in cameras, 30% had MP3 players. Four out of five had colour screens. All 950 million could access the web (at least via WAP), and all 950 million could send and receive SMS text messages. Over two in three were high speed (at least GPRS/EDGE/CDMA2000 1xRTT); while one in five phones sold last year was a 3G phone."