Charted: There are more mobile phones than people in the world
![Over 5.4 billion people worldwide have at least one mobile phone subscription.](https://assets.weforum.org/article/image/TQhiPT_Ke9B-NrLc8aAb0qzhFtstBj2SABHsUy5QMbY.jpg)
Over 5.4 billion people worldwide have at least one mobile phone subscription. Image: Pexels/fauxels
![A hand holding a looking glass by a lake](/uplink.jpg)
Get involved with our crowdsourced digital platform to deliver impact at scale
Stay up to date:
Technological Transformation
- This month marks 50 years since the very first mobile phone call.
- Motorola engineer Martin Cooper rang his chief rival from a street in New York on 3 April, 1973.
- Now there are more mobile subscriptions than people on the planet, reports Statista.
- There were more than 8.58 billion mobile subscriptions in use worldwide in 2022, compared to a global population of 7.95 billion.
Today marks the 50th anniversary of a momentous phone call. On April 3, 1973, Motorola engineer Martin Cooper was standing in a street of New York when he made the first ever call on a true mobile phone, calling his chief rival at Bell Labs, Joel Engel, presumably to gloat. The call, made on a prototype of what later became the Motorola DynaTAC, was brief, as Cooper later recalled. "I said 'Joel, this is Marty. I'm calling you from a cellphone, a real, handheld, portable cellphone.' There was a silence at the other end. I suspect he was grinding his teeth."
Cooper's call was a pivotal moment in the history of mobile communication, as it marked the beginning of a new era. Today, mobile phones are ubiquitous, with over 5.4 billion people worldwide having at least one mobile subscription, according to GSMA. In fact, there are now more mobile subscriptions than people on the planet, as the former overtook the latter in 2016. According to the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), there were more than 8.58 billion mobile subscriptions in use worldwide in 2022, compared to a global population of 7.95 billion halfway through the year.
EDISON Alliance: What is the Forum doing to close the digital gap?
Don't miss any update on this topic
Create a free account and access your personalized content collection with our latest publications and analyses.
License and Republishing
World Economic Forum articles may be republished in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Public License, and in accordance with our Terms of Use.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and not the World Economic Forum.
The Agenda Weekly
A weekly update of the most important issues driving the global agenda
You can unsubscribe at any time using the link in our emails. For more details, review our privacy policy.
More on Global CooperationSee all
Marianna Lillo and James Purcell
August 19, 2024
Spencer Feingold and Charlotte Edmond
August 16, 2024
Natalie Pierce
August 12, 2024
Antoine Rostand
August 7, 2024
Dimitri Zabelin
July 19, 2024
Li Dongsheng
July 16, 2024