Disruptive Mobility Roundup: Virgin Mobile, Fon, and ZYB
June 3rd, 2008 by Kyle OutlawTags: daily telegraph, devices, fon, gartner, kyocera, Mobile, virgin, zyb
Half the World’s Population Has at Least One Mobile Phone
The Daily Telegraph reports that mobile phone usage has reached 49 percent penetration rate globally in 2007, according to the International Telecommunications Union. The fastest growth was seen in developing countries in Asia and Africa. The report states that the growth of mobile adoption is occurring at the same time that fixed telephone usage is decreasing - mobile phone usage in Africa for example represents 90% of all telecommunications usage. There does however remain a “digital divide” in the form of bandwidth availability and cost, and this will remain a key challenge for governments and telecoms in developing countries in the next few years. |Via Daily Telegraph |
[Pic of the week: Kyocera's Virgin Mobile Festival Special Edition Wild Card...via Engadget ]
Napster of Wi-Fi?
Martin Varsavsky, the Argentinian entrepreneur responsible for FON, envisions a global network comprised of shared wireless connections according to a recent article in the International Herald Tribune. The Madrid-based start-up has $55 billion in funding from companies such as Google, British Telecom and Skype. The network currently has over 800,000 registered “Foneras” and there are approximately 300,000 Fon-enabled hot-spots available globally. |Via ITH |
Gartner: IM and Social Networks to Dominate Mobile Messaging
No doubt about it SMS is huge globally and catching on rapidly here in the states, however Gartner expects that mobile IM and social networks will eventually dominate. “Volumes of photo messaging will start to stall in the next few years as users increasingly share photos through mobile communities and social network portals rather than sending them directly to one another,” states the report. It also is expecting 2.3 trillion mobile messages to be sent worldwide in 2008. |Via Cnet |
Mobile Social Networking
ZYB, a Danish mobile social network that enables users to back up phone numbers onto the web and also make connections, send messages, share photos, etc. Vodafone, seeing opportunity in the mobile social space, has purchased the company for $49 million. |Via Silicon Valley Insider |
2 Responses to “Disruptive Mobility Roundup: Virgin Mobile, Fon, and ZYB”
New Media is now being used to initiate social, political, and economic change under many different global conditions. New Technologies(mobile phones)are no longer products and services for the wealthy and middle class. They are being used in new ways and areas of the human society, even by the most economically challenged. They are also changing the way people live, communicate, fight disease, and increase their standard of living around the world. - By Pete Sabbagh
This is just amazing.