Mobile Phone Data and Statistics from 2007

In 2007, 1.15 billion mobile units were sold. Now according to Tomi in a post in Forum Oxford, these 1.15 Billion was split so that 805 million went to existing customers and only 300 million phones sold to new customers.

According to Informa, total number of subscribers worldwide increased by 600 million (from 2.7Billion in 2006 to 3.3 Billion in 2007) in 2007. This would mean that 300 million people got only SIM's and no phones. I am sure this would make green lobby a bit happy because people are recycling phones ;)

According to Informa, 28% of phone subscriptions in 2007 were multiple subscriptions (one person having more that one phone/SIM). In Europe this figure was approx. 50%.

This raises an interesting point; there is a big market for phones with dual SIM capability. It is not so simple though. There are no standards defining phone behaviour with dual SIMs. All the phones that I am aware of have a single transmitter/receiver. This means that even if you have two SIMs, they are both not active at the same time. You would have to manually choose which one is active at any point of time.

Manufacturing of dual SIM phones with two transmitter/receivers is possible but the phones will become slightly bulky and expensive. It can definitely make my life easier so I am all for them, dont know what others feel.

On the flipside, if you lose the phone you lose both your SIMs and are totally cut off till you get atleast one replaced.