The U.S. Census Bureau says that there are nearly 7.2 billion people on Earth, growing at a rate of 2 people per second.
But according to GSMA Intelligence — a global trade association conducting real-time mobile network analysis—there are now more than 7.2 billion active SIM cards in the world and the number is increasing five times faster than the human population.
As sure as the sun rises and sets, this day was always going to dawn. Our love of gadgets and obsession with vicarious existence wouldn’t have it any other way. Yet the fact that there are more active mobile devices across the globe is still a pretty jaw-dropping statistic.
Note that the stats also include machine-to-machine (M2M) mobile connections, mind you — and some folks have multiple phones. The actual number of unique mobile subscribers is 3.6 billion across the world.
In other words, half the world’s population still don’t have a mobile phone.
Kevin Kimberlin, chairman of Spencer Trask, commented:
“In the evolution of our wireless world, we’ll never again see such a crystal clear punctuation point for mobile progress!”
But he warned:
“Don’t be fooled by this 100 percent crossover point. Since many of us have two or more devices, this active user number obscures a harsh reality. Over half of the people in the world are not so fortunate. They still don’t have a mobile phone. So we have more work to do”.
