There are now more than 5 billion mobile subscriptions in service and the world is adding about 2 million new mobile users per day, according to the latest market analysis from Ericsson.
According to Ericsson estimates based on industry information, the 5 billionth subscription was added Thursday, July 8.
Some other notes:
- In the year 2000, about 720 million people had mobile subscriptions, less than the amount of users China alone has today.
- Mobile broadband subscriptions are growing at similar pace and are expected to amount to more than 3.4 billion by 2015 (from 360 million in 2009). Studies show that soon 80 percent of all people accessing the internet will be doing so using their mobile device.
- In December 2009, Ericsson calculated that the amount of data traffic carried over mobile networks exceeded the amount of traffic generated from voice calls for the first time.
