Huge achievement for the Telecom markets. The impact of having a mobile phone is quite far reaching than just enabling communications.  Cellular Phone became a life style for many, a life saver for some and integral part of their livelihood for a whole lot of others. As per the statistics, at the end of 2007, as per ITU report, one in two in the world now have a cellular phone. Wow!

Source: 49% of humans have mobile phones: ITU
THE number of mobile phone users world soared to over 3.3 billion by the end of 2007, equivalent to a penetration rate of 49 percent, the International Telecommunications Union has said in a report.

Africa showed the strongest gains over the past two years and more than two thirds of all mobile subscribers were from developing countries by the end of 2007, the ITU said. This is ‘a positive trend that suggests that developing countries are catching up,” the report said. Mobile subscription growth stood at 39 percent annually in Africa between 2005-2007, and 28 percent in Asia over the same period. India and China added 154 million and 143 million new subscribers respectively. The global annual average growth rate stood at 22 percent, the ITU said.

Do you know your State laws on Cell Phone usage? Do you know whether it is already illegal for you to talk on cell phone while driving? Every state has its own set of rules on cell phone usage.

Here is a nice compilation of all State Laws in to a one map by Jalopnik.

Rules Of The Road: Jalopnik Guide To Cell Phone Usage Laws

If you haven’t noticed, Mobile or a cell phone is no longer just a phone that we knew. Today, we CAN take pictures, record video, access email, browse internet, download music, watch TV, use cell phone as a smart card, pay at a shop, listen to podcasts, write your blog and the list goes on almost endless.

NPR’s Eric Weiner wrote an interesting summary of how Mobile phones are changing our lifestyles here.  Few interesting snips:

Americans spend, on average, seven hours a month talking on their cell phones, but that figure doesn’t capture how much the cell phone has become a part of our lives. It is, as one researcher put it, "a second skin"— itchy at times and prone to blemishes but something that increasingly we can’t imagine living without.

2007 will likely be the first year in which Americans spend more on cell phone calls than land line ones.

In other ways, too, cell phones are changing how we relate to one another.

On the other hand, cell phones loosen the bonds with those outside our inner circle.

The article also points to an interesting graphic about US mobile consumers, "The Rise of the cell phone".

Also don’t forget to watch this wonderful video "The Evolution of Cell Phone".

While watching the above video, I came across this interesting conversation of "Three Generations View of Cell phone".