I’m fascinated by the numbers of homes that had telephones in the first half of the twentieth century. It went from 20 percent in the 20s to 80 percent in the 60s to 90 percent in the 80s and finally hit around the high 90s percent around 2000.
So, it literally took nearly a century for something as simple as the telephone to basically hit full penetration.
Since then, we are now at 50 percent of homes with only a cell phone and 35 percent with both.
In other words, it’s taken 10 years for Smart Phones to hit the levels of penetration that it took telephones 50 years to hit.
No last mile for cellphones, actually very little cabling at all, it’s all satellites and towers, power for the towers is about all the cabling you need. That helps the logistics a lot. But of course logistics can’t cause adoption, it can only hinder. The other part of the equation is the people deciding en mas and very quickly: I want that thing. In that I think smartphones have profited off two previously existing trends: computers and gadgets. Before the smartphone ever showed up society had already accepted computers as a part of life, especially internet connected computers. And was already hooked on doodads, from walkmans, to various PDAs, pagers, keyfobs and everything. So when the computer in your pocket showed up the people were already primed for it. I don’t think most people even considered it, these were two things they already had in their life, merging them into one was a natural progression.