Look around you, there are a lot of phones kicking about these days aren't there? Whether you are in the office, on the train or even relaxing back at home, chances are you've seen a lot of mobile phones today.

But how many is lots?

Buried within Qualcomm's latest earnings report, that was published at the end of July, is the company's prediction for how many chips it plans to sell up to December 2010.

So far the company has sold almost 300 million phone processors to companies like BlackBerry and HTC, however it is estimating that it will shift a further 106 - 111 million chips bringing the yearly total to 394 - 399 million.

Put in perspective, and that's over 1 million phone chips destined for over a million devices every day.

Compare that to the company's 2009 figures and it's up massively. For the whole of 2009 Qualcomm sold 317 million chips. Going back 7 years to 2003 it's even more impressive. As the UK saw the launch of 3G, Qualcomm sold just over 100 million phone chips in the whole year.

What the number likely to be for 2011 is still anyone's guess. However with internet tablets expected to dominate CES 2011 and launches throughout the year, with Qualcomm expected to provide the processing power for most of those devices it looks like that number could be edging its way to 400 million or even more.

That's a lot of phones and devices.