Half the world has a mobile. Sort of

According to the ITU, mobile phone penetration rates are expected to reach 50 percent by early this year with the three billion subscription mark already passed some months ago.

Unsurprisingly, most of that growth is coming from emerging markets like Africa, which has come up with a growth rate of 50 percent in the last few years. The stars of the show, equally predictably, have been the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China) adding one billion new users between them last year.

But, as the ITU points out, it doesn’t necessarily follow that because penetration is 50 percent, one in two people are using a mobile: “Double counting takes place when individual consumers subscribe to more than one service. Also, operators’ methods for counting active prepaid subscribers vary, often inflating the actual number of people that use a mobile phone. On the other hand, some subscribers, particularly in developing countries, share their mobile phone with others, thus spreading its benefits. Finally, and despite high growth rates in the mobile sector, major differences in mobile penetration rates still exist between regions and within countries, particularly urban versus rural areas,” the ITU reckons.

With that in mind, I wonder what the real number of users is?