The majority of the world's population will soon have a mobile phone

The number of mobile phone users around the world will overtake the number of non-users in the next few months, according to a report from the United Nations International Telecommunication Union. Eight years ago, only 12% of the global population had a mobile phone. The ITU said the estimated figure of 3.3 billion subscribers was taken from operator figures and didn't take into account people who had more than one phone, unused accounts or people who shared their phone. Meanwhile, Telecom Trends International says the number of mobile subscriptions has gone well over three billion, but the number of users is 2.6 billion because many users have multiple devices or use multiple SIM cards. They reckon global mobile subscriptions will reach five billion by 2014, with 4.1 billion users. [Sources: AP via Google, Cellular-News.com]