No need to adjust your set -- the United Nations communications chief has boldly predicted that half of planet Earth's population will be hooked on some sort of mobile phone before 2009 dawns. Granted, the numbers he's talking about do look strictly at subscriptions, so a small percentage will be skewed by those with multiple accounts (and thus, multiple numbers), but really, the forecast isn't all that outlandish. After all, we already
hit 3.3 billion mobile phone subscriptions back in November of last year (and
4 billion lines overall). As predicted, it's growth in developing regions such as Africa and the Middle East which will boost the overall figure the most, with yearly increases in those areas expected to hit 27% and 25%, respectively. So, what are the chances a post eerily similar to this pops up in 2012 or so saying the entire world has a cellphone? Our trusty Magic 8-ball says "Signs Point to Yes."
[Via
Core77, image courtesy of
Road and Travel]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
iceman7 @ Sep 27th 2008 11:26PM
Its pretty sunny downtown...
Anthony @ Sep 28th 2008 4:39AM
Shes yum.
Hush @ Sep 29th 2008 8:19AM
Her name is Yum? Pronounced yoom?
tabi @ Oct 2nd 2008 9:35PM
We don't need cell phones. We just need to be patient to get to the PCs and check our emails while we are out of our home. Phones just desturb us at wrong times.