4 billion mobile connections reached this week - but only 100 million are broadband!

I ran across an interesting update on the status of mobile connections today, which brings up some questions.  I thought I’d share this short summary from GizMag (02-12-09) with you.

“February 12, 2009.  The world passed its four billionth mobile connection this week, passing another milestone along the road to the ubiquitous wirelss connectivity of every human being.  The first commercial citywide cellular network was launched in Japan by NTT in 1979 and it took 23 years for one billion mobiles to be connected.

The two billion mark was passed in 2005, with the three billion milestone passed in 2007 and the historic “tipping point” where 50% of all human beings are carrying a mobile phone was reached in Q2, 2008.

Further growth in emerging markets such as China, India, Indonesia and Pakistan, plus the integration of previously unconnected devices are expected to push the number of global connections to six billion in 2013.  There are only 6.7 billion human beings.

Mobile Broadband accounts for just 100 million of the four billion mobile connections, compared with 1.1 billion fixed broadband lines.  Given the rapid penetration of mobile into the global community, mobile broadband can be expected to accelerate from this point too.  Notably, with fixed line broadband included, broadband connectivity now reaches on sixth of the world’s population.”

So, I have a few questions for you….

1.   What are your thoughts regarding broadband mobile in general?

2.   How quickly do you think it will reach the same penetration that the fixed-line world demonstrates?

3.   What applications do you think will drive the demand?

And this is a pop quiz question……….

4.   Who or what represents a bigger population of users than the 6.7 billion humans we’re connecting?

Hope to see some answers from you!

And I wish you all a very special Valentine’s Day with your loved ones!

Lili

Comments

[Phone Line]

I think a large figure people no have use broad band at home. But trend of mobile net increases rapidly.

[Geo]

This is such great information! thanks so much!