Pakistan goes from 300,000 to 90 million cell phone users in under 8 years

Estimate of how much Pakistanis have spent on cell phones between 2001-08
Talk about the acceleration of a Bugatti Veyron being impressive. It just got left in the dust with the rate of growth the Pakistani cell phone market has demonstrated. The News reports that the cell phone user base in the country just hit 90 million!
But here’s the scary part. If you make the following assumptions:
The average cell phone is used for about a year
The average cell phone price has been about $100 over the last 8 years (on the lower side probably)
The CAGR has been around 226% to get us from 300K to 90M users
Then you are led to conclusion that Pakistanis have spent almost $16BN on cell phones in the last 8 years. That’s over $2BN a year just on the cell phones themselves, representing about 10% of the trade deficit in the current year, but a much bigger percentage of the trade deficit during this entire 8 year period! Some of you will want to argue with me about non-linear growth blah blah blah. I understand all that. This is a simplified estimate and if you reduce the number of phones, I can argue for an increase in the average price. Point is, the final number is in this ballpark.
What is inexcusable, looking at this, is the fact that there is NO cell phone manufacturing happening in Pakistan! Clearly, $16BN in revenue is enough enticement for ANY cell phone manufacturer to setup shop locally. It’s incentive enough for some level of vertical integration where much of the supply chain could justifiably reside in Pakistan. None of this has been done, and in a nutshell, it’s bloody shameful. It has had very negative economic impacts that could have simply been avoided. I wonder if anyone at the PTA or Ministry of Communications is reading this and whether they will move off their behinds and fix it.