Though not very new, Mobile mania does not seem to be losing its popularity till today. This is evident from the fact that the total number of mobile subscribers in the world has crossed a whopping 5 billion mark. The milestone was reached on 8th July, 2010, Telecom major Ericsson reports. With the entire population of about 6.8 billion in the world, this figure indicates that as much as 73% of these people have mobile phones. And the day is not far when everyone on this planet will be on mobile.
India and China seem to have been adding on to this growth at a substantial rate. The global figure stood at 720 million, just about a decade ago. But China alone has this many subscribers today. India is following a competitive trail with a user base of about 600 million.
Mobile phones apart, the number of mobile broadband users is also growing at an exponential rate. If it grows continually (which is very much likely to happen) at this rate, it is expected that by the year 2015 there would be about 3.4 billion users as against 360 million in 2009. And with that, almost 80 % of the netizens may be shifting base towards mobile internet browsing. In fact, last year, the data traffic over mobile networks was much more than that produced by phone calls.
There is a good news for those mobile players who think that they are already getting saturated, with the propagation of 3G. Because its coverage is quite low (500 million), as many of the users are still happy with 2.75 G networks. India also has just entered the 3G arena. So, there is still a light at the end of the tunnel.
Ericsson also forecasts about 50 billion mobile subscriptions by the year 2020 considering the addition of 2 million subscribers every single day. The mobile revolution is indeed really mobile and its syndication viral.
Correct me if I am wrong but I think this is the number of connections but not the number of subscribers. Right?
Hi Mitul, I believe there is no difference between the number of connections and the number of subscribers. Because a subscription generally means a connection.Thanks
There is a difference. 1 person can have 2 connections (2 mobile numbers) and hence number of subscribers is just 1 but connections is 2.
Thanks for your article. I have posted your article in my blog for others to see it also. In India, many use sim cards without proper submission of application forms. In Jammu and Kashmir, BSNL is able to provide 90% subscribers details whereas other operators are not able to give more than 49% of theri subscribers details to the govt. for verification in case of any trouble. To increase the subscriber base, there are complaints that sim cards are issued without proper identification. Whether this is the practice followed in other countries? What is the mechanism adopted in other countries to check correct identification?
There is a difference between subscibers and connections because the trend which is visible these days esp in cities is subscribers holding many sim cards