It’s Official: Humans Are Now Outnumbered By Mobile Devices

A new report has revealed that there are now more active mobile devices than humans on the earth.

As sure as the sun rises and sets, this day was always going to dawn. Our love of gadgets and obsession with vicarious existence wouldn’t have it any other way. Yet the fact that there are more active mobile devices across the globe is still a pretty jaw-dropping statistic.

The latest estimates suggest there are somewhere between 7.19 and 7.2 billion people in the world. Now that’s a lot of mouths to feed, backs to shirt, and potential customers to fleece, but check this out. According to The Inquirer, digital analysts at GSMA Intelligence revealed this week that the number of active mobile devices across the world currently stands at 7.22 billion. Homo sapiens, consider yourself owned.

It gets worse, or better, depending on your point of view. The report goes on to state that everyday devices such as smartphones, mobile phones, and tablets are multiplying five times faster than the human population, which in comparison is growing at a rate of about two people per second, or 1.2 percent annually. Did someone say, “Bouncing bunny rabbits Batman, it’s a boom!”

The GSMA tracker also reveals that at present, there are 3.6 billion unique mobile subscribers on this big old rock we call mother earth, which is a 5.35 percent rise from 2013. Here’s the bottom line for the captains of commerce and princes of industry — the worldwide mobile market revenue is up 3.75 percent from last year, and is currently worth a staggering $1.1 trillion. Which is music to the ears of Kevin Kimberlin, chairman of Spencer Trask & Co.

“No other technology has impacted us like the mobile phone. It’s the fastest growing manmade phenomenon ever, from zero to 7.2 billion in three decades.”

And just like any gift that keeps on giving, forecasters predict the human race is going to stay extremely mobile for the foreseeable future.

In a report released earlier this year, analyst outfit Gartner predicted that the typical home could contain more than 500 internet-connected devices by 2022.

“We expect that a very wide range of domestic equipment will become ‘smart’ in the sense of gaining some level of sensing and intelligence combined with the ability to communicate, usually wirelessly,” said Nick Jones, vice president and distinguished analyst at Gartner.