Will Every Human in China Have a Cell Phone by 2014?

I tend to look at all mobile market statistics skeptically. And, multiyear projections are usually the cause of a bit of eye-rolling for me. But, the gigantic numbers in the eMarketer Blog are too much fun to look at and plausible enough to get a mention from me here:

Looking Beyond the Staggering Mobile Stats in the BRIC Countries

Here’s a couple of interesting arithmetic results using the numbers provided in this article.

The BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, China) countries had a combined total of 1.6 billion (yep with a “b”) mobile subscribers in 2009. eMarketer’s projects these countries’ subscriber based will grow nearly 60% to 2.58 billion by 2014. China alone is expected to have 1.311 mobile phone subscribers by 2014.

Here’s something puzzling though. China’s current population is estimated to be 1.31 billion with an annual growth of 0.604% (less than 1%). If their population growth remains linear, China’s estimated 2014 population will be around 1.35 billion people. So, if eMarketer’s prediction is correct, nearly every human being in China will have a cell phone by 2014.

AllFacebook Marketing Conference returns to San Francisco on June 28-29! Join us and get a how-to guide for marketing to Facebook’s 800 million users. A full agenda will be announced soon. Keep an eye on our event site for more information. Special early pricing is available for only $249 until this Wednesday, February 15, so register today.