It’s a good thing humans come with two hands because we’re gonna need’em if we’re expected to handle the bulk of cell phones and tablets that are going to be cramping up our planet in the near future. A new study from Cisco predicts that 2012 will be the year that mobile devices will surpass the world’s population of humans. As impossible as that sounds, a few years later in 2016, the company expects there to be 10 billion active mobile devices around the world. Humans, respectively, are shy of 7 billion as of this year.

As the proliferation of mobile devices increases, the amount of mobile data traffic will naturally increase, as well. Last year, in fact, mobile data traffic was eight times more than the entire global Internet in 2000. While smartphones still only represent 12% of all mobile devices in the world, they’re doing the bulk of that data trafficking as they represent more than 82% of total mobile data traffic in the world. That’s a lot of apps we’re using.

Some other random yet striking facts from the study:

As much as mobile devices are in demand and people continue to buy more and more of them, older devices must get disposed of properly somewhere. Since land is somewhat of a premium on Earth these days, I hear outer space has some available positions open.