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Mobile Devices Will Outnumber People By 2017
DavidGilbert99 writes "According to the latest report from analysts at CCS Insight, there will be more mobile phones and tablets in use in four years' time than there are people on the planet. With the machines well and truly taking over, will we be using them or will they be controlling us?"
I have 2 old mp3 players I haven't used in many years and don't even know where they are. I also have some calculators I don't use. I have an old IPod Touch I got for free I don't use. Pretty soon I'll likely end up with such a collection of phones, tablets etc instead. So? Why should I care?
Between the shoddy code, poor manufacturing tolerances, poor quality control, and dependence on power sources that they cannot protect, computers and devices will not take over in my lifetime even if there was an intent to do so. That doesn't even get into design that requires humans to perform maintenance tasks, flick switches, or otherwise do things that keep the systems up that the machines might not even know about.
XKCD said it best.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
TFA contends that all smartphones & tablets sold are still in use. If you buy a new smartphone and throw away / recycle the old one, you don't get to count this as 2 smartphones in use.
... it will be the people controlling the content.
Define "In Use".
I sure as fuck only have 1 phone and 0 tablets, and that's won't even change.
Everyone I know who has a tablet and a phone pretty much only uses the phone.
I sure hope so!
You fuck more than 1 phone and a tablet on the side - well buddy, you can bet your ass that the phone will find out and leave you. And what? You're stuck with an aging, sagging, out of date tablet who can't even play Flash videos?!
Really?
On a side note, folks say I ahve a porblem with reading compreshension and spelling. I have no idea where they get that from!
I've only seen two uses for tablets... ok - three, but the third is kind of dumb.
1) Entertaining your toddler with Angry Birds and Skype with grandma.
2) Bringing it on the bus to read the news so you can look like a hipster.
3) You're working in marketing/sales at a technology company and want to look like you know the latest tech when making presentations.
I use about 0.007 phones on average, and most of that is as a watch. At least thats by my definition of in-use. Maybe they are using a different one?
They won't "control" us in any cool, malevolent-supercomputer-overlord, kind of way; but I'll confidently predict a downright alarming number of man hours spent drooling mindlessly and poking at the blinky lights that live behind the glass on the shiny thing.
It's too bad, really. Getting crushed by a malevolent supercomputer would be flattering in a way(just like being assassinated, only people worth mentioning get that). The fact that humans will spend time sucking up to a Tamagotchi if you let them is... rather less flattering.
It is fun to use a Moore's Law extrapolation. Only 30 years later, cellphones will outnumber insects on the planet. And in a another 173 years after that, they will outnumber the atoms in the universe
Except that now they have the option of hiding behind machines and making look like it isn't so. They have done it to business, to politics, to religion, and they will do it to technology.
Let's see, everybody in this household has a phone, tablet and we have a netbook. 7 devices for 3 people.
Yeah, I can see mobile devices outnumbering people.
Realistically, tablets will always exist next to phones. Some people might like "phablets" but form-factor matters. A phone can replace a camera, can have a lot of handy apps, but is lousy for reading, browsing and video compared to a tablet (yes, they can be done, but... ugh). In short, the tablet and smart phone are two form factors that will likely be useful for some time.
Not sure where the "smart watch" will fit in, I see it more useful as a peripheral for your phone, but some people may see it as a replacement for the phone, and supplementing as a hotspot for a tablet (which then handles everything your phone might have). That's still two devices per person, as a reasonable "data and communications tool set"
I carry two smartphones, have an ipad and a Nexus 7... oh and a kindle that I use when I travel... Actually I have 4 Nexus 7's.. 3 are broken ones friends gave me. and I believe I'll have a couple more broken ones soon, those replicate fast.
So yes, if people keep breaking nexus 7's I'll have 100,000 of them by the end of the year... all broken..
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Using fuzzy accountant math, possibly true but not without fuzzy math. Are they including wireless devices like stoves that now come with WIFIbuilt in? Are they counting the bazillion other hardware controllers with WIFI? (each of which technical people are telling people it's both dangerous and stupid to have WIFI on!)
Middle class families can't afford more than 1 device per person, and a hefty portion of those can't afford more than 1 device per household (depending on which side of the middle class scale they sit on). Our middle class in the US has been shrinking rapidly over the last 20 years, so someone is fantasizing!
Oh wait, we already have welfare recipients with dozens of free Obama phones, paid for by the few middle class people that pay taxes. That's the answer then! The governments will all give away phones with money they don't have and borrow that money from each other in some sort of fuc*@d up bartering scheme right?
Great googly moogly!. Does every stupid ass thing people say now make a "story"?
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
I have 4 just for myself
You got the touch!
"will outnumber the atoms in the universe"
Illogical.
-Seven of Nine.
Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
Good point I guess, I have 7 or 8 phones in my drawer and none of them are "in use".
Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
Right this moment, there are more ears of corn in use than there are people on the planet. Will we be eating them, or will they be eating us?
Seriously... having lots of something doesn't automatically change its nature.
We may not imagine how our lives could be more frustrating and complex—but Congress can. – Cullen Hightower
Two hits on Google show you are wrong:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passenger_vehicles_in_the_United_States#Total_number_of_vehicles
http://www.census.gov/popclock/
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
I did my part in the coming mobile device/robot war vs humans. I recently put my cell phone through the laundry.
"It is fun to use a Moore's Law extrapolation. Only 30 years later, cellphones will outnumber insects on the planet."
You misunderstand Moore's Law. It's all about the number of transistors in a chip, not the number of devices made from chips.
Windows has shown us that software consumes resources faster than Moore's law can keep up. My PC takes longer to boot than the Apple ][ (and 8088 PC clone) I had in the early days. Applications run not faster (but look prettier).
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
I am sitting in a conference room at work right now that has enough chairs for everyone at my small company to sit in. There is also a chair for me in my office, another at my desk at home, and one more in the dining room! And just think of all those chairs at restaurants around the world just waiting for me to sit in them! In fact, a recent study determined that there are 4.6 chairs for every man, woman, and child on the planet (I'll have to get back to you with the reference on that one). Basically the world has been conquered by chairs without us even realizing it.
You forgot reading ebooks, which for a tablet also includes comics and manga (either legitimate or pirated). They're also useful for all purposes when travelling far from home, and on the bus to watch videos (most of which are probably pirated too).
I also take mine to role playing game sessions since I have (non-pirated) gamebooks on mine.
He said "I" and "Everyone I Know". Those are some pretty specific constraints. He was making a speculation, and I see nowhere that he extrapolate that to everyone. Nor did he indicate he was an American, nor in Southern state if you're the same AC commenting below. Seems you're just as bad as far as making hostile presumptions about other people based on little to no evidence. You're entitled to your opinion, but should be embarrassed at your hypocrisy because it just demonstrates your own stupidity.
So all of these cannot host a web server on port 80 on the global internet at the same time.
If by 2017 the number of mobile devices is more than the number of human beings on this planet, by the year 2011, when those mobile devices end up in landfills, think of the amount of WASTE !!!
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
I think by "Moore's Law extrapolation" he meant a growth rate like the one in Moore's Law. Because "exponential" is one of those big, hard words, I guess.
Carrier IQ is a program supposedly used for diagnostic purposes. It is imbedded in the software of android phones. It tracks everything including key strokes. Now here is a fun blurb from CarrierIQ dot coms website from their whitepaper section. Carrier IQ takes consumer privacy very seriously. Anonymization and consumer choice through opt-out are important and included capabilities of Carrier IQ systems. Services are delivered to network operators through an encrypted environment. Carrier IQ acts as a service provider to network operators and device manufacturers, and makes no independent use of data from Carrier IQ enabled mobile device. But is this the truth? Assuming Carrier IQ is not a front for a US government agency. (get paranoid people, LOL) what would stop the government from issuing a court order under the US patriot act section 215 to access all that information?
If you're going to tell a lie, you should pick a subject that is not so easily verified. Even at Slashdot, someone will eventually read the actual article and note that it does not say what you claim.
You are and idiot, it was a joke on the rapid "semi-exponential" growth that transistor count has been regarded to have, and obviously cellphones will never outnumber the insects on the plant or atoms in the universe. Really? You wanted to put down an AC for that?
"You are and idiot"
Your self-referential post speaks for itself.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Yeap
But on that topic, what's the deal with this company? Their staff roster doesn't seem to include any actual mathematicians or statisticians. They don't mention anywhere in the press release (or any other articles I could find on their site) how they arrive at their figures. It's just Jobs-style gut feelings and marketing experience. Even if their predictions are right it's impossible to trust such unbacked assertions... and, ultimately, it's irrelevant to the real players: Microsoft, Google, and Apple all employ scores of PhDs and industry veterans who could forecast circles around them.
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
Tablets are horrible for reading ebooks. They smudge easily, they strain the eyes, and the battery life won't support reading for an extended period. An e-ink reader is orders of magnitude better.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
> With the machines well and truly taking over, will we be using them or will they be controlling us?
The machines run Unix or Unix descendents. They'll crash, dump core and reboot before they can take over the world.
I think that there is already more mobile phone activated lines than people here in my country (a friend used it in a conversation with me, some days ago...)
Can we drop this already?
As I mentioned in an earlier post, my wife and I spent 4 days poolside in the Dominican Republic with a Kindle Fire and a Nook Color. Conditions bright enough every day for both of us to need sunglasses.
Yet, strangely enough, neither one of us had any problem whatsoever using our tablets to read ebooks for hours on end.
Am I saying that tablets with color LED displays are _better_ than e-ink readers for long term reading and battery life? Absolutely not! But the days when reading from a bog standard tablet to be a pain outdoors are long gone.
Tomi Ahonen pointed out in March that we already have 6.7 billion _active_ mobile accounts. This clearly means that we are already FAR past that point when you include all the devices not on telecomm networks.
BTW, in the same blog post Ahonen also estimated that the point at which active accounts would exceed the world's population would happen some time this summer.
Old fashioned paper phone books probably still outnumber people.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Mos important, nowadays: "2) Bringing it on the bus to read the news so you can look like a hipster." :P
*mosT
I have news for you. They already do. Watch anyone try to walk or eat dinner without constantly consulting their smartphone. They have us trained well. Unfortunately, sometimes they train us to walk into walls or off of sidewalks into oncoming traffic, so it might not be a mutually beneficial symbiotic relationship...
Do you understand the concept of long term eye strain? Its not a matter of just getting a headache or eyestrain on a given day- there's cumulative damage from staring at a screen all day.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
The only thing you can't get is the speed, but most people don't actually need that because work isn't so far away.
Unless you work in an area whose cost of living is so much higher than the cost of living 50 miles away that an hour's car commute each way is a profitable way to exploit such a gradient in cost of living. Or unless the loop detectors that control the traffic signals between where you live and where you work don't respond to 2-wheeled vehicles. I've seen a few intersections in Fort Wayne, Indiana, that don't respond to a bicycle and a motorcycle put together. Or unless you don't have other cyclists to show you how to dress for and ride in a thunderstorm or in snowy conditions. Or unless the motorists turn out not to know how to share the road with a cyclist.
Thankfully, neither of us suffer from this.
No, you don't realize you suffer from it. You won't until it accumulates to the point you need corrective glasses.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
Yeah how many processors in your car engine? Radio/Entertainment device? Tires? Clothes? Google Glass? With the advent of smart dust, you can put processors everywhere in virtually everything, and a bunch of that is going to be mobile.