Mobile Phone Penetration

Source: "Mobile-phone culture: The Apparatgeist calls," The Economist, December 30th 2009

Now a further mobile-phone revolution is under way, driven by the iPhone and other “smart” handsets which let users gain access to the internet and download mobile applications, including games, social-networking programs, productivity tools and much else besides. Smart-phones accounted for over 13% of the 309m handsets shipped in the third quarter of 2009. Some analysts estimate that by 2015 almost all shipped handsets will be smart. Mobile operators have started building networks which will allow for faster connection speeds for an even wider variety of applications and services.

The article considers the cultural differences in cell phone use that exist now, and the possibility that there will be a cultural convergence in cell phone use as more general cultural convergence leads to common needs for personal telecoms.

Comment: Surely cell phones are changing the way we live, as the changes in the way we live are driving changes in our use of the technology.

I was struck by the fact that there are now more cell phones in the United States than there are people, in spite of the fact that we also have a high penetration of land line telephones. The situation may be more extreme than that. We have two land lines and three cell phones in the house but we also have a router for internet communication for the four personal computers that are in regular use and another for six handset telephones. I don't know what the limit will be for telecom connections per person, but it will probably be quite high as we wire (wireless?) appliances to the Internet and they communicate among themselves.

In developing countries there remains a telephone divide based on poverty, as many people still don't have telephones or even good access to public phones, and consequently systems have not evolved to allow transactions via telephone to the same extent that they exist in the North. JAD