Hamadoun Touré, secretary general of the International Telecom Union (ITU), said he expects the number of mobile phone users to exceed 4bn, or 61pc of the world's 6.7bn inhabitants, in December.
Soaring demand in developing countries has seen year-on-year growth average 24pc between 2000 and 2008. At the turn of the century just 12pc of the world's population had a mobile phone, by early this year the figure exceeded 50pc.