- The planet has a population of 7 Billion people alive. And now there are 5.9 Billion active mobile phone subscriptions. That is a global penetration rate of 84.3%.
- In one decade this industry grew more than 8 fold. This mobile industry has sustained a compound annual growth rate of 24% year-on-year for a whole decade!
- 4 Billion. That is the unique mobile phone user number. That is 57% of the total population of the planet, which very literally – not by statistical gimmicks – very literally do have an active mobile phone subscription (prepaid or post-paid) and at least one mobile phone handset that they use.
- MOBILE SUBSCRIBERS AND HANDSETS IN USE
- Total mobile subscriptions (incl multiples) . . . 5.9 B
- Total mobile handsets in use . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.8 B
- Total unique mobile phone owners . . . . . . . . 4.0 B
- How big is 4.8 Billion? There are 970 million cars registered and in use worldwide. There are 1.1 Billion landline phones. There are 1.3 Billion personal computers of any kind including desktops, laptops, netbooks and tablet PCs like the Apple iPad – all combined. There are 2.2 Billion internet users (including office use, home use, shared use at internet cafes and schools etc, and mobile internet users). There are 1.8 Billion television sets and 4 Billion radios in use globally.
- 19% of the installed base of handsets globally are smartphones. That is an increasing ratio, last year it was 17%.
- The new sales of mobile phone handsets this year passed 1.6 Billion units, and 30% of them – 486 million – were smartphones.
- South Africa ranks 29 in the world for smartphone penetration rate per capita – at 17%.
- Industrialized World: In Europe the installed base of smartphones corresponds to a 41% penetration of smartphones per capita.
- In advanced countries of Asia-Pacific like here in Hong Kong or Australia and Singapore etc, the penetration rate of smartphones per capita is almost half, at 48%
- Emerging World (or the full global view): in the Middle East the smartphone penetration level per-capita is past one third, at 37%, slightly ahead of North America.
- Latin America has passed the point of a smartphone for one out of five people, the per-capita penetration rate is 22%.
- In the less-affluent countries of Asia, which includes most of the big population countries like China, India, Indonesia etc, the smartphone penetration rate is 12% per capita.
- And in Africa its still in the early days, with smartphone penetration rate of 3% per capita.
- WHAT DO WE DO ON MOBILE? SMS
- Compared to total email users – SMS is three times bigger. Compared to all landline telephones? SMS is 4 times bigger. Compared to facebook? Over 5 times bigger. Active users? SMS text messaging grew users last year from 4.2 billion to 5.0 billion ie 16% growth in total paying users. In just one year!
- revenues of SMS globally? Still grew 5% last year reaching 126 Billion dollars worldwide! The SMS industry earns a fresh new million dollars every four minutes of every day, day and night, 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year.
- SMS alone is bigger than Hollywood movies and the global music industry and videogaming – all added together.
- WHAT OF MOBILE DATA?
- 1.8 Billion total people worldwide – browse internet content on their mobile devices at least part of the time.
- mobile advertisingin 2010 globally was 11.5 Billion dollars. I now have the update to that number, for 2011 that was 14.4 Billion dollars.
- How many people receive ads on their phones? 3.4 Billion people worldwide, or 58% of all mobile phone owners. Most of that is now banner advertising, with SMS text messaging based ads second, MMS third and the rest such as search, location-based ads, adver-gaming, branded smartphone apps, etc making up the rest.
- there is now a race for which country is the first to stop the manufacturing of coins and banknotes altogether – replaced by mobile money. Kenya has passed the point where 30% of its GDP is now going through mobile phone money accounts. The ‘usual suspects’ are in the race of course including Finland, Norway and Estonia; including Japan and South Korea; including the Philippines and South Africa.
Source: Communities Dominate Brands
