Since 2009 the mobile phone industry has been a member of the economic premier league: in now generates annual revenues in excess of $1trillion.

In 2010, this meant $1,800,000,000,000 of income. But where’s all that money going, who’s spending it – and on what?

At a lecture at Oxford Brookes University this week, I sought to explain how the mobile economy is evolving and what the implications are for different parts of the world. The slides are attached in PDF.

As you’ll see, while smartphones and apps may be the big thing in the rich world (worth $9billion in 2010), for developing countries, SMS still reigns supreme. That said, virtually all mobiles being sold in places like Africa are now Internet-enabled.

Still, with more than 300 million smartphones shipped last year, and a third of a million apps now available on Apple’s App Store alone, a new computing and communications platform is emerging. It is also a landscape in which the range of available software will decide which handsets win out.

Add to this the forthcoming switch-on of the 4G spectrum, and you have all the ingredients for some radical product and service innovations.

Exciting times.