Mobile Cellular Penetration

I came across a rich set of data visualisation tools earlier today on Google Labs that allow one to run queries against publicly available data sets. Some of these will look familiar to fans of Dr. Hans Rosling, whose TED appearances are the stuff of legend. One of the data sets available is Mobile cellular subscriptions.

Last year, at CTIA, Ivan Seidenberg, CEO of Verizon Communications, talked about 500% penetration as being possible. He meant this largely in the context of an emerging M2M market, but even absent that, it's interesting to look at some representative countries.

I've gone ahead and plotted several below, but you can click through and select your own. (Feel free to share any insights from mining the data in the Comments section below).

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Average penetration worldwide was 60% in 2008. Interestingly, Iran was bang on the average. It will be interesting to track the slope of its curve recently, especially as the phone has been a device being widely used by reformers in the country.

Korea and Japan are an interesting lines. They were both faster out of the gate, but the US has caught up, at least in terms of penetration (my friend and Koreaphile, Allen Kupetz will remind me that their data rates and breadth of uses, including mobile payments/e-wallets far exceed the US).

Norwegians were early adopters too. I remember being blown away in 1992, when my cab driver in Oslo had a cell phone. Today, can you imagine a cabbie not talking on their cell phone constantly in any big city?

The last two that I plotted were the UAE and Saudi Arabia, both of which have achieved far greater than 100% penetration. I had an inkling of this in 2001 when I was living in Dubai. Several Emiratis in our office were already carrying two phones, but again, it wasn't something that I could imagine doing. Clearly it's become the norm.

It is interesting to think about the implications of the mobile Internet in regions of the world, like the Middle East and Africa, where landline penetration lagged developed countries and until recently, Internet cafes were the primary place to access the Internet. Clearly, the game is changing. And while the Internet can be used for evil, I prefer to think of it as having removed all impedance to knowledge acquisition. Is another period of Enlightenment too much to hope for?

That's my .02! What's yours?

Martin Suter
 (martin.suter at iplicensing.net)

Comments

[Martin Suter]

Koreality;

Thanks for visiting and for your comments. As you suggest, the ubiquity of cheap broadband (both wireless and wireline) in countries like Japan and Korea does exceed the US. The broadband stimulus plan is supposed to address this, as the lack of cheap bandwidth places cities (and regions) at a comparative disadvantage. Whether it was the right policy decision or will be successful are points for another blog/discussion!

I agree that regimes, such as China, Iran and others, attempt to control the flow on information, but IMO, are ultimately doomed to fail. We saw this during the Iranian uprisings, when after the election, pictures and video from camera phones went viral, as did Tweets describing the extent of the attempts by the government to suppress political opposition. With 100% penetration, is full transparency, whether intended or not, unavoidable?

Having lived in Beijing in 1989, one wonders how different the student protests would have been (and the global reaction), had they been able to self-organise via SMS and share the extent of the tragedy via Twitter.

Martin Suter

[Koreality]

Suter is insightful as ever. But I wonder as penetration approaches 100% globally, does the metric cease to matter? Koreans can get up to 14 mb downloads with HSDPA 3.5G, effectively eliminating the need for fixed broadband. Japan has 100 mb - 1 gb to the home for $25 / month. Suter asks about the impact of the mobile internet in places like the Middle East. Repressive governments, totalitarian-like censorship, and poor human rights with regards to women are not impacted if the firewalls that exist in the fixed network at simple extended.