Which devices is sold more every day, than there are babies born?

What else could it be, but the iPhone.

In its 2012 1st quarter sales figures, Apple sold 37.04 million iPhone’s across the planet accounting for 53% of all of its revenue.

More people across the planet now take home new iPhone’s every day (402,000 units per day), than take home human babies (300,000 human births per day).

The figure needs to be seasonally adjusted as it includes Christmas sales, but nevertheless the numbers are huge and the implications for consumer preferences for their tech and connectivity needs even bigger.

In this weeks FutureTech segment Jason Jordan of Perth’s 6PR and I chat about what this means; what technological road we’re going down and where to from here for mobile technology.

Listen now:

and listen live each week at around 5:05 p.m. (AWST).

One person has made a difference

The online virtual world most of us take for granted is only 20 years old.

In the very short space of two decades we have eagerly and voraciously moved our lives and businesses into it and become dependent on it.

Look around you and see people everywhere staring longingly at their mobile screens, checking status, checking in and checking up.

Each seems intent on their interaction, to the point where it appears to the innocent passer-by as if they are greedily sucking air from their virtual breathing apparatus.

This new online and PC world required a pioneer, a visionary.

Someone to stare far into tomorrow and beyond and see what can be done. Someone to bravely say “what if” and then see about getting it done.

In our generation that forward looker was Steve Jobs, pioneering products, brands and people.

He started Apple Computers at a time when the PC was unknown and unwanted. He built software platforms far in advance of their marketplace needs. He innovated digital films when he purchased and breathed new life in to Pixar films. He returned to Apple after his forced departure, to take an ailing almost irrelevant company to corporate world dominance, with a suite of new horizon products that include iTunes, iPhone and iPads.

Steve Job’s gift seems to be his unwavering consumer focused vision of technology and what they could become as he uncannily built category definers that would be purposeful, useful and intuitive.

He thought nothing of relentlessly driving his handpicked tribe to seemingly reach far into the future and drag back to today unseen of and unheard of technology.

His ability to make the world see the future is also clear as he regularly ignited the passion of the everyday consumer, geek and non tech ahead alike, to stand for hours outside one of his global retail stores to be the first to buy and use one of his latest who would have known I needed gadgets.

From a corporate viewpoint he rebuilt Apple over the last decade and a half to tack into the wind. To seek and desire difference in order to find market opportunity. To work for Apple requires checking in the obvious at the door and joining the Don Quixote search for virtual and technological windmills.

This and where to from here for Apple was the on air discussion between myself and Jason Jordan of Perth radio’s 6PR in this weeks FutureTech segment as we paid tribute to the life and times of a gone to soon true innovator.

Listen now:

and listen live each Sunday at 4.40 p.m. (WST)

Heaven just got a hell of a great innovator

Steve Jobs legacy will be the cause of much writing and review but his place in history is, I’m sure, certain for bringing innovation and fresh thinking to the brave new computer and digital worlds.

Today as a tribute to the man I am choosing to reflect on his determination to see the future for what it had to be and not merely as a poor reflection of what has been.

In 2005 he told a group of Stanford graduates “remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything – all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important”.

His gift to us all is that we figure out, in life, what is truly important to us, steel our determination, gather our courage and go for it.

Adelaine Ng of Radio Australia and I chatted about Steve’s legacy, Apple’s road ahead and where to now for innovation, in our on air tribute to Steve Job.

Listen now:

ABC International Radio – Tech Spot – 17 July

In this weeks segment we chat about Apple’s touch screen netbook to launch in October (the worst kept industry secret), China to get the iPhone without WI Fi and Microsoft takes on Google Office with its own free online offering and retail stores, before exploring a UK teenagers ad hoc handwritten comment of what he thinks of social media and who is actually using it – and here’s a clue it’s not him or his friends.