The Cell Phone Cometh…

1 Trillion texts in one year in the US.  An average of 261 minutes per month per person globally.

Gone are the phones with attached “briefcase” – the mobile phone has evolved rapidly as usage has increased and costs have dropped.  And the statistics behind the rise of the mobile phone are staggering.

A decade ago, there were fewer than 500m mobile subscriptions, according to the International Telecommunication Union (ITU). Now there are about 4.6 billion (see chart). Penetration rates have risen steeply everywhere. In rich countries subscriptions outnumber the population. Even in poor countries more than half the inhabitants have gone mobile. Dial a number and the odds are three to one that it will cause a mobile phone, rather than a fixed-line one, to ring somewhere on the planet. (Mobile-phone culture: The Apparatgeist calls, December 30, 2009, The Economist)

Not only has the cell phone become ubiquitous, but, as we’ve said, it is now beginning to rival the PC as a true computing device.  The iPhone, Droid, and NexusOne all retail for about the price of a laptop.  And for good reason.  While they have arguably less functionality, they are *more* functional, because they are truly mobile and, as a consequence, ever present.

With all this firepower, it is not surprising that people of different cultures use the tool in different ways that fit into existing cultural norms.  The full article by the Economist features a really interesting comparison of keitai (in Japan, because of taboos around talking on phones on the train, people graviate to data services), Handy (Germans have shorter calls, too, but for different reasons), and other cell phone cultures.

But, as the article continues, while culture impacts technology use, technology can in the long term change culture.  Delving into the statistics for usage by young people (see prior posts), shows where the trend is going.