
What Is Diffusion of Innovation: How New Ideas Spread
Diffusion of innovation describes how new ideas, technologies, and behaviors spread through populations over time.
Contributions
Every accepted correction to this page is recorded with the exact change, so readers can see how the page improved over time.
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Corrected an overstated global statistic: the article claimed global smartphone penetration exceeded 80 percent by 2023, but GSMA's authoritative State of Mobile Internet Connectivity report puts global smartphone ownership at approximately 54 percent of the world's population. The 80-90 percent figures are real but apply only to high-income countries and specific saturated markets, not the global population as a whole.
What the page claimedArticle presented a regionally-specific statistic (developed-market smartphone penetration) as if it were a global figure, obscuring large regional gaps.
What was correctedCorrected the figure to the real global percentage (54 percent per GSMA) while noting the real 80-90 percent figures for high-income countries, and reframed the point to acknowledge that access barriers, not just preference, genuinely explain much of the remaining gap.
Why: This finding was originally identified by Codex's fact-check pass; independent verification via GSMA, ITU, and secondary sources confirmed the correct figures before applying the fix.
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