Mobile Phones: It took 26 years to reach 3.3 billion sold

In a piece by the Washington Post, which doesn’t really give us any new news, but more of a history lesson into how things started, where things are today and a possible picture of the future, one quote stood out more so than the rest:

“From essentially zero, we’ve passed a watershed of more than 3.3 billion active cellphones on a planet of some 6.6 billion humans in about 26 years. This is the fastest global diffusion of any technology in human history — faster even than the polio vaccine.”

I’ve ran into this scenario several times, I’m sure the other Into Mobile writers have as well, where people ask me why I’m so interested in these damn Snickers Bar (Mars Bar for the UK audience) sized pieces of plastic. Another quote from the article that sums up my reasoning for lusting perfectly:

 ”An iPhone now has more processing power than did the North American Air Defense Command in 1965, the functions of smart phones are limited only by imagination.”

It took 26 years to make something like the iPhone, something like the Nokia (NYSE: NOK) N95. Thinking about what kind of hardware will be in my pocket and the new capabilities it will possess in 5 years is hard enough, thinking about the next 26 years will make your head explode.