Chances are someone will call or text you on your mobile phone today. You will probably watch a video on the Internet via social media or on a website. You may watch some TV – possibly via Netflix or on catch up. Late last year, we hit a landmark. For the first time in the history of mankind the number of mobile devices in the world exceeded the population.
There are approximately 7.2 billion people on the planet – and now there are more than 7.22 billion mobile devices.
Gadgets like tablets and smartphones are multiplying five times faster than we are, with our population growing at a rate of about two people per second, or 1.2% annually.
What’s more impressive is for mobile devices, it’s taken just three decades – a mere 30 years – to go from zero to 7.2 billion.
Compare these numbers:
- It took the telephone 75 years to reach 50 million users
- It took radio 38 years to reach the same number
- It took television 13 years
- Fast-forward and it took the web just 4 years to hit that milestone.
And then it took the Angry Birds Space app just 35 days to get 50 million people using it.
Four trillion messages were sent on the messaging service WhatsApp last year – that’s around a thousand for every person on the planet. And while we’re thinking about the numbers, YouTube has more video content uploaded every month than the three main American networks broadcast in their first 60 years of existence.
So we’re all communicating – but what are we talking about? Where is all the content coming from? As a race, humans have always told stories – the caveman with his drawings, artwork depicting great battles and even stone friezes on important religious buildings. But whereas the Bayeux Tapestry took the best part of a decade to complete, the demand for new content is voracious.
But one thing has not changed: people like to know what’s going on. They want to be entertained; they want to be informed. They want to find out things they didn’t know and they want to feel connected. Video is an ideal way to achieve all those things.
In times gone by, a king would make a ’progress’ around his kingdom – for many months they would travel in style and meet as many of their subjects as possible. Now through video and technology, there’s no need to leave the Palace.
Indian PM Narendra Modi holds the world record for speaking live ‘face to face’ to the biggest audience ever in a single day in a campaign. Using lifelike holograms at simultaneous rallies around India, he reached 1.5 million people. What will happen in the next 30 years?