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Industry Trends

5 Billion Mobile Phones

By July 12, 2010July 30th, 2023No Comments

There are now over 5 billion mobile phones in use worldwide. According to Ericsson, this landmark was reached on last Thursday the 8th of July.

Mobile analyst, Ben Wood, of CCS Insight, says that the mobile phone is probably “the most prolific consumer device on the planet”.

At 5 billion, there are already about 3 times more mobile phones than personal computers worldwide.

Of the 5 billion mobile phones it has been estimated that 1 billion connections have been made in the last one and half years according to Wireless Intelligence.

When the mobile phone was first launched in the U.K. in1987, it had been predicted that there would be a maximum of 10,000 mobile phones. But now 30 million phones are sold every year in the U.K. itself.

A large part of the growth in the number of mobile telephones can be attributed to the growing markets in regions like India and China.

At the end of June 2010, the Asia-Pacific region alone accounted for 47% of global mobile connections.

The mobile phone has today become practically indispensible across all strata of society, and many people have more than one mobile phone. Many users also use mobile phones with more than one sim-card.

In Western Europe the mobile penetration is estimated to be 130% while in Eastern Europe, it is 123%.

Mobile broadband connections are also increasing along with the number of mobile phones. In 2009 there were 360 million broadband connections. By 2015 they are expected to reach 3.4 billion.

Ericsson has also estimated that 2 million new mobile connections are added daily and the number of 3G subscriptions is already over 500 million.