Three Billion Phones

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).