I have exactly 98 seconds to detail this year's most remarkable moments in mobile.
Stop texting for just a moment, kids - this is your 2012 Mobile Year in Review.
In 2012, Twitter took home the gold - the gold in "Nearly Interrupting the Olympics." Londoners were
asked to limit their tweets to urgent events, lest wireless traffic crash the networks.
At 31 million tweets, the American election was the most Tweeted event in history.
6 in 10 Americans want the right to vote - via wireless.
This Thanksgiving, Instagramers shared a record 10 million photos - peaking at 226 pics per second.
In another trophy-worthy moment, Facebook bought Instagram for $1 billion.
In 2012, Apple performed more like a country than a company. iPhone 5 sales could single-handedly
move the entire $15 TRILLION dollar US economy by up to half a percent. Apple sold more
mobile devices in 2012 than they've sold computers ever. More than half of Americans now own
smartphones, and there are more than 1 billion active smartphones on planet earth. Mobile
data usage literally doubled in 2012. How? Watching YouTube...gangnam style. Over 50% of
all mobile data is videos, and we watched 9.3 billion mobile videos in the US alone.
So: Everything's going mobile,
which is good. But wireless data and devices are sucking up mobile spectrum quickly, which
is markedly less good. Shall we despair? Not today, friends. The future is bright. And
the future has a weird name: 4G LTE. It's like 2011's mobile network only
much, much faster. Our continent is home to 69% of the world's
LTE subscribers. We lead the world in next-generation mobile. Annnd finally, Foursquare is gaining
adoption...a few million light years away. NASA's Mars Rover checked in on the red planet. Meaning
that precisely 100% of Mars' inhabitants are Foursquare users.
That, my friends, is your 2012 Mobile Year in Review. See you in 2013.