Today, 3 March 2012, marks the moment that the one billionth Chinese mobile phone contract is taken out. India are not far behind, with just about 900 million contracts. Together, these two countries account for one quarter of all mobile phone contracts.
The USA comes in third, with 327 million (which means an average of more than one cellphone contract for every man, woman and baby in the country). The top nine countries all have over 100,000 million contracts, with Germany and the USA having more contracts than people.
You can see the full list of countries by number of mobile phones in use here.
Of course, another way to look at this list would be by percentage penetration per country. Usage statistics would also be interesting, as this would probably be correlated with revenue and profitability of the industry. If you know where I can find up-to-date global data on these metrics, please let me know.
For now, though, let’s revel in the knowledge that China is the most technologically and mobiley connected nation in the world. By far.