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Surprising Science

Humankind’s Primary Tool: Mobile Device

Evidence shows that the mobile phone is becoming indispensable to us: more people are paying for apps, and they're more willing to trade privacy for benefits.

People everywhere are consuming more and more wireless bandwidth to manage a wider variety of tasks. Western Europe and the Asia-Pacific region will account for nearly 60 percent of worldwide mobile data traffic by 2014. But emerging markets such as Central and Eastern Europe, Latin America, and the Middle East and Africa, having started with relatively small numbers, are growing the fastest. Mobile service is among the fastest-spreading technologies in history. The number of mobile-phone accounts worldwide has doubled, to about 5.5 billion, over the past five years, while world population has reached nearly 6.7 billion.


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