Monday, July 12, 2010

This changes everything...

There are 5 BILLION mobile phones in the world.  With our population of  6.8B, this is very impressive. (Note that some folks have more than one, of course).
There are now more than five billion connections worldwide.
In many regions, penetration exceeds 100%, where there is more than one connection per person in the country.
Ben Wood, mobile phone analyst at CCS Insight said the mobile phone may be "the most prolific consumer device on the planet".
"If you just take the UK in 1987, when the first mobile companies launched, an industry insider predicted a maximum of 10,000 phones.
"Now almost every adult, child and domestic pet seems to have one, given that 30 million phones are sold every year in the UK," he said.
Rapid growthThe four billion connections mark was surpassed at the end of 2008, and analysts at Wireless Intelligence predict six billion connections worldwide by the middle of 2012. [More]
What this means to me is you can throw predictions about the future out the window.  Never have so many had access to so so much information. 

We are about to unleash more global brain power than we have ever imagined.

Think about cell phones raised productivity in rural America.  Now add in the "first-pound-of-fertilizer" effect for places like India and Africa. As the market information finally penetrates to every corner of of the world, and information flows essentially unfettered, several business plans built on the ignorance of customers will fail.

Stop and think how much of your farm profits are based on folks (especially landowners) not knowing current market dynamics.  Put that on your "to-be-fixed" list.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I just can't believe ignorance will be going extinct anytime soon.