How many phones are there in the world?
How many phones are there in the world?
about 8.9 billion mobile connections — more than there are people
Mobile subscriptions passed one per person globally around 2018. More people have access to a mobile phone than to a flush toilet.
There are more active mobile connections than living humans, at roughly 8.9 billion against a population of 8.2 billion. That does not mean everyone has a phone: about 5.7 billion people are unique mobile subscribers, and many of them hold two or three SIMs to arbitrage tariffs or coverage. Smartphones account for roughly 4.8 billion of the total, so well over a billion people still use feature phones. Around 3 billion people have a phone but no mobile internet subscription.
How the figure is arrived at
Network operators report active SIM counts to national regulators, who report to the ITU; the World Bank publishes the series as subscriptions per 100 people. "Active" typically means used in the past 90 days, and the threshold matters — a stricter definition removes several hundred million dormant SIMs.
How confident it is
- Low estimate
- 8,500,000,000
- High estimate
- 9,200,000,000
- Spread
- 1.1× between the bounds
Other things people built counts
- How many countries are there in the world? 195 — or 193, or 206, or 249, depending on who is counting
- How many cars are there in the world? about 1.5 billion motor vehicles
- How many planes are in the air right now? roughly 10,000 to 20,000 at any moment
- How many languages are there in the world? about 7,150 living languages
- How many McDonald's are there? about 43,000 in over 100 countries
- How many nuclear weapons are there? about 12,200 warheads
- How many websites are there? about 1.1 billion hostnames — but only around 200 million active
- How many books have ever been published? about 130 million as of 2010 — probably over 200 million now
- How many airports are there in the world? about 45,000 with runways — but only around 4,000 with scheduled airline service
- How many ATMs are there in the world? about 3 million
- How many cities are there in the world? about 10,000 with over 50,000 people; 33 megacities over 10 million
- How many buildings are there in the world? somewhere between 1.5 and 4 billion
- How many computers are there in the world? roughly 2 billion personal computers in use
- How many miles of road are there in the world? about 64 million km — roughly 40 million miles
Common questions
- How many phones are there in the world?
- about 8.9 billion mobile connections — more than there are people
- How is that estimated?
- Network operators report active SIM counts to national regulators, who report to the ITU; the World Bank publishes the series as subscriptions per 100 people. "Active" typically means used in the past 90 days, and the threshold matters — a stricter definition removes several hundred million dormant SIMs.
Related pages
- How many countries are there in the world? 195 — or 193, or 206, or 249, depending on who is counting
- How many cars are there in the world? about 1.5 billion motor vehicles
- How many planes are in the air right now? roughly 10,000 to 20,000 at any moment
- How many languages are there in the world? about 7,150 living languages
- How many McDonald's are there? about 43,000 in over 100 countries
- How many nuclear weapons are there? about 12,200 warheads
- How many websites are there? about 1.1 billion hostnames — but only around 200 million active
- How many books have ever been published? about 130 million as of 2010 — probably over 200 million now
- How many people are there in the world? Living things and the natural world
- How many stars are there in the universe? Space and the universe
- How many bones are in the human body? The human body
- How many grains of sand are there on Earth? Living things and the natural world
- How many ants are there in the world? Living things and the natural world
- How many trees are there in the world? Living things and the natural world
Sources
- World Bank Open Data — The World Bank (CC BY 4.0)