Epistemology
My Vodafone bill arrived today; the envelope bears the question: "Did you know that 1 in every 100 people on the planet own a Vodafone mobile phone?" Now, I don't believe that this is true, which means if I'm right that the question is rhetorical, the answer being 'no, it would not be possible to form a justified true belief [for example] to this effect'. But that sounds unlikely. Can there really be 600 60 million people with Vodafone phones? (This being, of course, not the same as there being 600 million Vodafone phones)
posted by Z31 at 7:56 pm
2 Comments:
No.
Germany 82,726,188
Italy 58,608,565
Spain 43,435,136
United Kingdom 59,889,407
Albania 3,087,159
Greece 11,212,468
Ireland 4,027,303
Malta 384,594
Netherlands 16,322,583
Portugal 10,463,170
Australia 20,507,264
Czech Republic 10,230,271
Egypt 69,954,717
Hungary 10,083,477
New Zealand 4,122,609
Romania 21,377,426
South Africa 48,051,581
Turkey 73,556,173
United States 296,208,476
of America
Total: 766,347,929
from here:
http://www.vodafone.com/article_wide/0,3041,CATEGORY_ID%253D306%2526LANGUAGE_ID%253D0%2526CONTENT_ID%253D230772,00.html
and here:
http://population.wn.com/
So, unless they have a very high proportion of the people in those countries, I'd say no.
Actually if you read the Vodafone link you posted in a bit more detail you'll find...
"At 30 June 2006, there were 553.0 million venture customers."
So the mailshot would appear to be accurate (according to Vodafone's own figures). Although it is a bit odd that subsidiary, joint venture and affiliate figures are already included in the "186,806,000 Vodafone Customers". I have a feeling that the term "venture customer" applies to all customers on networks that have an agreement with Vodafone for roaming. That is, anyone that could in theory bring revenue to Vodafone if they happened to connect to Vodafone when abroad. So that'd be pretty much any mobile phone user in the world seeing as it makes sense for national networks to have agreements with the multinationals for roaming. 1 in 100 is what I believe the advertising standards agency might call a "soft" figure.
I've just realised that 1% of 6 billion is 60 million, not 600 million. Vodafone has 94,078,000 customers in the Vodafone name, so it's got 1 in 100 sorted easily. With "venture customers" it's verging on 1 in 10. Nice.
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