Take every forecast not as gospel but as indicating the direction the market is heading. Look at multiple forecasts for consensus. Forecasting is something of a game. Healthy skepticism is required, even for the stuff we do.

Here are some wide ranging device and Internet access projections from IDC:

• More than 1.6 billion people – a little over a quarter of the world's population – used the Internet in 2009. By 2013, over 2.2 billion people – more than one third of the world's population – is expected to be using the Internet.
• More than 1.6 billion devices worldwide were used to access the Internet in 2009, including PCs, mobile phones, and online videogame consoles. By 2013, the total number of devices accessing the Internet will increase to more than 2.7 billion.
• China continues to have more Internet users than any other country, with 359 million in 2009. This number is expected to grow to 566 million by 2013. The United States had 261 million Internet users in 2009, a figure that will reach 280 million in 2013. India will have one of the fastest growing Internet populations, growing almost two-fold between 2009 and 2013.
• Presently, the United States has far more total devices connected to the Internet than any other country. China, however, is the leader in the number of mobile online devices with almost 85 million mobile devices connected to the Internet in 2009. The number of Internet devices in India, both mobile and fixed, is expected to grow commensurate with the number of Internet users.
• Worldwide, more than 624 million Internet users will make online purchases in 2009, totaling nearly $8 trillion (both business to business and business to consumer). By 2013, worldwide eCommerce transactions will be worth more than $16 trillion.
• Worldwide spending on Internet advertising will total nearly $61 billion in 2009, which is slightly more than 10% of all ad spending across all media. This share is expected to reach almost 15%% by 2013 as Internet ad spending grows surpasses $100 billion worldwide. 

Nothing much to be said other than: "growth, yes."

The big deal, which was highlighted by Google's Vic Gundotra the other day, is that "we're at the beginning of the beginning" of a new era of computing. It's really pretty clear that mobile devices, ubiquitous connectivity (which is coming) and data in the cloud are going to make computing and mobile Internet-based computing look very different in a few years than they do today. 

We'll be saying over drinks, "Remember when you had to sit at a terminal with an Ethernet cable plugged in to get online . . . "