By the end of the year, there will be more than 3 billion mobile phone subscriptions across the world according to The Mobile World, a telecommunications research firm. This number takes into account multiple subscriptions by customers (For example, in Europe there is more than one subscription per person!).
Leading markets include China, India and Africa and some 1,000 new accounts are added every minute of the day. It took 20 years to reach the first billion mark, just over 3 years for the next one and the third billion will have taken about two years, a clear sign that mobile phones have become ubiquitous.
Some 240 million mobile phones were sold just in the first quarter of 2007.