Germans To Buy 36 Million Mobile Phones In 2007

BITKOM has published a report which reveals a few figures on the state of the mobile nation:

• 36.5 million mobile phones will be sold in 2007 (a plus of 6% compared to 2006. Not digging into the detailed demographics based on 82 million inhabitants that is a shiny new phone for about every second German who is able to talk)
• on average 100 Germans have 109 active contracts (Western Europe’s average is 98, the US lacks behind a bit with 76)
• carriers will make 4.2 billion Euro in revenues in 2007
• 57 billion minutes of calls have been made from mobile phones in 2006 and 22.5 billion SMS have been sent
• when asked mobile data services are considered to be useful but hardly used yet. The prognosis is that this won’t change in the near future: only 20% are estimated to use them in 2010 (the biggest obstacle for a wider adaption seems to be intransparent pricing schemes; you usually need to use a pocket-lens to discover the price per MB but how much does it cost me to look up a restaurant on Qype or to download a track again? A few flat rate plans for data starting at 10 Euro have become available but they all are tied to 24 months contracts and so on)

(This article originally was written for blognation Germany. Since blognation is gone I have reposted it here)