The important point to make from these numbers is not the total handsets (there were similar numbers of phones sold last year) but the *type* of handsets. For the last six months or so, a vast majority of those phones shipped are color, Java-enabled, MMS-enabled, data-capable phones. In the next quarter coming up, a good chunk of the phones are going to be MIDP 2.0/WAP 2.0 phones, if not all of them. By the end of the year, almost 600 million new phones will be sold and all will be capable of mobile data services and applications. 150+ million will be camera phones, and a good percentage will be advanced smart phones too.

From The mBoom by Russell Beattie (April 30, 04) - I oversaw this one earlier.