UN agency: worldwide internet use doubles, mobile taking off in developing countries
The International Telecommunication Union, a part of the United Nations that focuses on worldwide technology development, said yesterday that internet adoption had doubled in the last five years, while mobile phones were ubiquitous in 90 percent of the world's population.
Clearly, the Internet is huge. But mobile voice and broadband may be huge-r.
Much of the rapid growth in Internet and mobile phone adoption is happening in the developing world, the ITU found. For instance:
"ITU’s new data indicate that among the estimated 5.3 billion mobile subscriptions by the end of 2010, 3.8 billion will be in the developing world."
Most telling is that in the last five years, the growth of mobile broadband has skyrocketed. Subscriptions to 3G phone services climbed from 72 million in 2005 to 940 million this year.
As many as 143 countries now offer 3G services, compared with 95 countries three years ago. [Here's the original news release with more facts and figures.]
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Comments
What a brilliant image. For me the most significant stat in the new ITU data was the number of mobile broadband connections: it is now close to one billion globally and growing fast. That’s 1.7 times the number of fixed broadband connections. The significance of this is examined in this interview with the ITU stats chief, which also contains the 2010 subscription data for mobile, 3G (i.e. mobile broadband), fixed line and fixed broadband by global, developed and developing countries and geographical regions: http://mobithinking.com/interview-susan-teltscher-itu
Posted by: mobiThinking | October 22, 2010 5:31 AM