Connecting the world

The computing industry has always sold to segments. Mainframes to large companies, minicomputers to medium-sized companies, PCs first to companies and then middle-class households, and so on. Today, there are around 1.5-1.6bn PCs on earth, of which perhaps half are owned by consumers, yet there are 7.1bn people on earth and 5.25bn adults. PC buyers are still a segment, and a pretty small one, and so, by extension, was the internet.