Now There Are More Gadgets On Earth Than People!
Humanity reaches a new milestone today as the number of gadgets in use surpasses the population count in our world today. The GSMA intelligence estimated that there are currently 7.2 billion SIM cards that are actively in use. The SIM count is also growing 5 times faster than the world’s population which is just a shy away in millions from 7.2B. Though the enormous number is a milestone of a sort, yet it doesn’t come as a surprise, especially with the growing trend in mobile technologies.
Kevin Kimberlin, Chairman of Spencer Trask & Co, commented on this milestone saying, “No other technology has impacted us like the mobile phone. It’s the fastest growing man made phenomenon ever — from zero to 7.2 billion in three decades”.
As the number of SIM’s grows to become more than people, it only becomes evident that nearly half the population has a mobile subscription or every individual owns two active SIM’s for a unique subscription. The Dual SIM phones in the market aids to utilize such provisions.
The rapid growth of communication technologies is more prevalent in countries like Finland, Australia, Japan, Sweden, Denmark, South Korea and U.S, where the penetration level is more than 100 percent as reported by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. “This device has become part of the fabric of society, whether a teenage girl taking a Blackberry to bed with her, or a farmer in an African village trying to find out the latest crop prices”, said a mobile phone analyst. He also revealed that more than 10 billion phones have been sold worldwide since 1994, with market giant Nokia alone selling 3.4 billion.
Modernization of our culture and technical revolution has led us to a world where there are enough phones, tablets and communication devices for everyone. The recent events in the technology industry hint about the decline of PC’s and a growing trend migrating towards mobile platform. Apple’s iPhone 6 was recently launched last month (September) with the new iOS 8 operating system amidst much anticipation.
Signifying the inclination towards mobile platform, Carolina Milanesi, research vice president at Gartner said, “Consumers want anytime-anywhere computing that allows them to consume and create content with ease, but also share and access that content from a different portfolio of products. Mobility is paramount in both mature and emerging markets,”
Beyond mobile communication technologies, there is now M2M communication technology that is evolving in markets. This technology moves a step ahead to establish communication between machines and its application is found in industrial automation, logistics, smart grid, smart cities, health, defense, etc.
With such trends, it is only likely that the gadgets are going to outnumber the people and let’s hope that the technology revolution does betterment to mankind.
