I've wrote about this before, but have you ever noticed when you try and use your cell phone to just make a call and nothing happens? You know you didn't fat-finger the number incorrectly. You watched your phone saying it was dialing "Steven" but it won't go through.
Frustration sets in. You start to want to throw it Doug Flutie-style. (Editors note, we don't condone throwing your phone like the once-great Quarterback but if you ever need insurance, we have it.)
A new report on global technology development by the International Telecommunication Union found that there were 6 billion mobile subscriptions at the end of 2011 — 7 billion people inhabit Earth. China and India top the charts having around 1 billion subscriptions each.
The number of mobile subscriptions is double the number of Internet subscriptions — there are 2.3 billion. Double - yikes!
One of the reasons is that people have switched to browsing the internet more on their cell phones than by using standard internet-subscription services. Between 2008 and 2011 the cost of fixed-telephone, mobile-cellular, and fixed-broadband Internet services dropped 30 percent. Fixed-Internet saw the largest drop, with the costs dropping 75 percent.
In the last 12 months mobile broadband has increased 40 percent globally and 78 percent in developing countries.
What does all of this mean? It means that the growing trend of internet users aren't browsing their favorite sites sitting in front of a computer. They are using a mobile device, i.e. iPhone, Smartphone, Tablet, etc.
In my humble opinion, the stats are only going to increase. And hopefully, this increase will eventually be a result of fixed-broadband internet services lowering their costs.
Excuse me, I must get back to being on my phone.