From “this”:http://news.com.com/Razr+phone+boosts+Motorola+to+No.+2+sales+slot/2100-1039_3-5598432.html News.com article on Motorola’s recent success with the “Razor”:http://www.motorola.com/mdirect/hellomoto/experience/v3/flash/default.shtml:

bq. More than a million of the slim handsets have been sold.

But that’s not really the point. This is:

bq. Overall, 674 million cell phones were sold worldwide in 2004, a 30 percent increase from the year before. Gartner credited the increase in part to emerging cell phone markets in Latin America. Growth is expected to remain robust in 2005, with Gartner predicting 730 million cell phone sales.

_730 MILLON_ phones. That’s just a damn big lot of anything. All I have to say about that is this (well actually, it’s not me, it’s the “Economist”:http://www.economist.com/surveys/PrinterFriendly.cfm?Story_ID=246152):

bq. In the early 1980s AT&T asked McKinsey to estimate how many cellular phones would be in use in the world at the turn of the century. The consultancy noted all the problems with the new devices—the handsets were absurdly heavy, the batteries kept running out, the coverage was patchy and the cost per minute was exorbitant—and concluded that the total market would be about 900,000. At the time this persuaded AT&T to pull out of the market, although it changed its mind later.