Across the world, mobile phones are changing the way humans interact and do business. The rising popularity of mobiles – currently there are over three billion worldwide (The Human Network, 2007)- is largely due to impressive uptake rates in third world countries, (DataWocky, 2008) where they are the prime personal communication device. The ever-increasing ability of mobiles to facilitate social interaction and commercial produce puts them at the forefront of a new media paradigm shift in which their worldwide prevalence, inherent mobility and hyperlocal potential mean that they will likely be the medium that will most fully realise the potential of convergence technology (Jenkins, 2006, 5). I decided to take a look at how some mobile phone functionalities are being used in different countries around the world.
'Mob Rules', by The Human Network (2007) extensively documents how mobile phones connect fisherman with ports in Southern India, enabling them to find out where their catch is in highest demand. Similarly, in Kenya, farmers use their mobile phones to ascertain the demand for their produce in the neighbouring villages.
In Australia, the advantage of mobile phones is the immediacy of communication. Most people have phones on their person all day, which has enabled some miraculous and life-saving rescues, but has also had damaging repercussions. Events like the Cronulla riots prove just how quickly information can spread, and how hard preventing virtually instant crowd gatherings can be.
Another concern is the policing of content on mobile phones taken illegally through video cameras (indecent photography, illegal concert/film recordings etc.) and then shared on a mass scale through mobile Internet or blue tooth file sharing.
In India there are over 246 million cell phones, but only 20 million Internet connections (DataWocky, 2008). It has been suggested that mobile phones could soon overtake PCs as the world’s dominant Internet platform (Wright, 2006) – and this scenario is quite conceivable to imagine for India in the near future. Henry Jenkins (2006, 4) documents that India is leading the world for mobile-Internet content in the form of streaming feature films. Currently though, studies have indicated that it is primarily the youth market (15-24 year olds) that use mobile phones to access the Internet and take advantage of modern phones’ capabilities, while older users tend to use phones more ‘traditionally’ (Hakuhodo, 2002).
Content distribution (including advertising) on mobile phones already takes place with subscription services – news, sports results, porn and games are all readily available - just watch late night TV! In India, as opposed to some Australian services, recipients of these services do not have to pay for each SMS they receive, meaning the senders must find their revenue through advertising (DataWocky, 2008). Text message advertisements can be highly personalised, as well as targeted to the recipient’s subscribed interests. The current limitations in content provision on mobile phones should not be a factor of discouragement, consider just how far PC content has come in the past 10 years. SMSs are used as a mass-communication device, for example, QUT now use SMS to warn students of safety threats.
Mobile Phones are an adaptive cultural technology, and are impacting on social and economic activity worldwide. Companies are trying to work out how they can monetise this medium in a relatively new and unfamiliar market. Mobile phones are not as private and personal as many of us thought they were – just ask Warnie.
References:
DataWocky. 2008. On Teasing Patterns from Data, with Applications to Search, Social Media, and Advertising. http://209.85.173.104/search?q=cache:AQxx9zGEgeEJ:anand.typepad.com/datawocky/2008/04/can-sms-be-a-pu.html+datawocky+sms+publishing&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=2&ie=UTF-8 (accessed April 24, 2008).
Hakuh0do. 2002. Hakuhodo Getting Closer and Closer to Asian sei-katsu-sha . http://www.hakuhodo.jp/press/20020305.html (accessed April 24, 2008).
Jenkins, H. 2006. “Worship at the Altar of Convergence” in: Convergence Culture: When new and old media collide. New York University: New York. 4,5
The Human Network. 2007. Mob Rules. http://blog.futurestreetconsulting.com/?p=27 (accessed April 24, 2008).
Wright, A. 2006. Mobile Phones Could Soon Rival the PC As World’s Dominant Internet Platform. Ipsos News Centre. http://www.ipsos-na.com/news/pressrelease.cfm?id=3049 (accessed April 25, 2008).
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4 comments:
It is interesting that there has recently been a large uptake of mobile phones in third world countries. Why are countries not prioritising socio-economic and political issues ahead of communications? Surely it would be more important to have enough food and health care over having a mobile phone. When you look at it from the context of the fisherman in Southern India as mentioned in "Mob Rules" it certainly makes some sense.
You mention the convergence of mobile phones and the internet and how it is youth mostly taking advantage of this. I would have assumed that middle-aged business people would be the most likely to utilise this for fast communication and quick access to resources.
On the topic of advertising through telecommunications SPAM has become a problem with unwanted text messages, some which require daily fees for people who fall for it. Soon phones will clogged with junk, just as email inboxes are.
I find it very shocking to know that India is the country with highest mobile rates compared to internet. You mentioned about the people in India using their mobile phones to watch feature films? Wow. Considering that their feature films are generally 3 hours length, this is really shocking.
I am aware that the younger generation are of course more gullible to this type of technology and new features on mobile phones compared to the older ones, however I would have to say that most of the older people have adapted well with it. Having a father who's 68 years old, he's very competent in handling technological items such as a fancy well featured mobile phone, PDA, online forums and discussion, chatrooms, and various computer softwares. It occurred to me that this might be because he is a businessman who needs to use all this to keep up with his work.
We barely have the capacity to download movies on our phones in Australia, with our ‘new’ 3G or third generation mobile phone network only being completed this year. The fact is the 3G network isn’t new at all. Japan is already operating a 7G network, with interactive and interpersonal capabilities that, while common enough technology in Australia, are yet to be integrated into our mobile phones. Unfortunately for Australia, due to its relative size and very low population density, infrastructure is far more expensive per capita that in a small high-density country like Japan.
This blog also discusses a key advantage of mobile phones being in their immediacy of communication. While this is a key advantage, it is also a disadvantage when you come to rely on a technology that isn’t always reliable. For example at very large events mobile phone networks often overload and crash, which if you’ve ever experienced you know to be very frustrating. I think it’s sad at how insecure we are that we all have to be able to be contacted all the time. Obviously there are practical reasons too. All I know is that whenever I lose my phone for the first couple of days without it I feel very vulnerable, but after I get over that stage I feel liberated to be unreachable. Sometimes I feel like my phone rules my life.
One thing I think this blog entry should have mentioned is that the number of registered mobile phone accounts in operation in Australia has just surpassed the population.
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