Mobile Devices Poised to Outnumber Humans

Smartphones, tablets, laptops and other Internet-connected devices are about to take over the world.

 

"By the end of 2012, the number of mobile-connected devices will exceed the number of people on Earth, and by 2016 there will be 1.4 mobile devices per capita," network system company Cisco said in a report released today (Feb. 14). "There will be over 10 billion mobile-connected devices in 2016 … exceeding the world's population at that time (7.3 billion)."

 

Cisco expects global mobile data traffic to increase 18 times current levels. North American mobile traffic is likely to increase by a factor of 17.

 

Forget gigabytes, terabytes and petabytes, we'll be measuring data in exabytes (1 quintillion bytes or 1 billion gigabytes). Cisco estimates that worldwide mobile data usage  will reach 130 exabytes by 2016 — equivalent to watching 33 billion movies, listening to 4.3 quadrillion songs and sending 813 quadrillion text messages from our mobile devices over the course of a year.

 

Fortunately, network data speeds will increase as well. Cisco expects a ninefold increase in data transfer speed  by 2016.