A new study by Informa found that there are more than 3 billion SIM cards in active rotation, which means that lots of folks have more than one SIM card and that there are seriously lots of phones out there.
I mean think about it: 3 billion mobile subscribers. That’s an amazing number, a world changing number. That’s 3 billion people who had almost no way of connecting to the outside world in developing countries can now plunk down a few bucks for a prepaid phone and get market prices, call mom, and generally become another node in an interconnected economy and culture.
Global mobile subscriptions hit three billion [TheRegister]
It says about 3 million SIM cards in active rotation, however the article talks about 3 billion mobiles. Is 3 million a typo?
It is. Thanks Liam.
I still have a problem with these numbers, since not every mobile phone has a SIM card, especially in the US there are a lot of SIM-card-less CDMA phones, and I think in Africa and other countries as well.
I guess the bottom line remains, it’s a sh*t-load of phones, there are not a lot of products that exist in these numbers and that wide-spread across the world. And Asia who is usually the test bed for anything that’s new and electronic must be hella jealous right now that we got the iPhone first ;-)