1 billion smartphones

As of the beginning of this month, there are now a billion smartphones being used on the planet, up from 708 million a year ago, MobileBusinessBriefing.com reports, citing data from Strategy Analytics. That’s 1 in 7 people on Earth, the market research firm says, and “16 years after the first smartphone [the Nokia Communicator] was launched in 1996.” The iPhone arrived in the market in 2007. The news is further confirmation that all that’s done on the Web – entertainment, research, commerce, self-expression, collaborative problem-solving, social action, etc., and of course communication – will increasingly be done wherever anyone goes, moment by moment. Which in turn confirms that safety, privacy, regulation, behavior management, control, etc. increasingly work best from the inside out (inside users, not inside devices!) and are by definition a social, or shared proposition. Because of the immediacy, spontaneity, accessibility, mobility, and borderlessness of “computing” now. [See also “The majority of US teens’ mobiles are smartphones.”]