The mobile revolution
The Digital Revolution is already here. There has been a fundamental change in how people use communication networks all over the planet.
Look at the statistics:
In
2007
there were only
122 million
smartphones (all makes and operating systems) sold worldwide.
By
2010
that had more than doubled, at just under
270 million
units worldwide.
While the uptake did not grow exponentially (if it had, we'd all be knee-deep in discarded phones), it continues to accelerate by an extra
200-300 million
units
every year
2015
saw
1.4 billion
smartphones sold all over the world. More than
ten times the volume of 2007
and experts expect that trend to continue indefinitely.
According to
TechCrunch,
by
2020
there will be
6.1 billion
smartphone users globally. Click
here
for full article
Tablets and larger-scale mobile devices
came later to the field, despite having been invented first. They show the same scale of growth as smartphones, even if they still lag behind:
-
2010
saw just 19.4 million tablets (all makes and operating systems) sold worldwide.
-
More than 200 million tablets were sold in
2013,
and by 2015 it was more than 350 million units.
Both trends look to be quite sustainable, as markets in China, the Middle East and Africa are nowhere near saturated. In fact, the lack of a traditional communications infrastructure in many parts of the developing world, and highly fractured infrastructure throughtout Asia (due as much to economic and political boundaries as actual lack of communications infrastructure) means that many consumers in those areas rely on mobile networks and mobile devices as their primary or even only communications links.
