I’ve written an article with associated charts for Technology Review, tracking the adoption rate of mobile phones and their inevitable replacement, smart phones, relative to other similar technologies.

It really has been quite an astounding 30 years:

In 1982, there were 4.6 billion people in the world, and not a single mobile-phone subscriber. Today, there are seven billion people in the world—and six billion mobile cellular-phone subscriptions.

Even countries where the average income is only $5 per day now have at least one mobile phone for every two people. For more, including the blazingly fast start of tablets, check out the full article and charts.