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Culture & Religion — February 14, 2012

Mobile Devices Will Soon Outnumber Humans

By the end of this year, there will be more mobile-connected devices than humans, said Cisco in its Global Mobile Data Traffic Forecast Update. There will be 10 million devices by 2016.

What’s the Latest Development?

By 2012, the number of mobile devices with Internet connections will surpass the number of humans on Earth, says Cisco Systems. The consumer electronics manufacturer estimates that by 2016, their will be 1.4 mobile devices for every person, bringing the total number of devices up to 10 billion. “The numbers include not just phones but tablets, laptops, handheld gaming consoles, e-readers, in-car entertainment systems, digital photo frames, cameras, and ‘machine-to-machine modules’.”

What’s the Big Idea?

As the number of devices growth, the bandwidth needed to keep them all working will need to grow, too. In 2011, global mobile traffic doubled for the fourth year in a row and will grow 18-fold by 2016, says Cisco. Steaming content, particularly video, is expected to require the most bandwidth. The popularity of mobile devices speaks to the erasure of boundaries between nearly every kind of media and the lengths businesses have gone to to meet consumers’ demand for instant access to news and information.

Photo credit: shutterstock.com

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