I mentioned earlier that the Economist issue of April 12-18, 2008, had a great special report on mobile telecoms. I promised to return to it. I'll touch on some of my fave tidbits and give a bit of my commentary.

Americans and cellphones

Its an age thing. The Economist quoted the Pew Research Centre for age-specific use of various mobile services. SMS use? Among 18-29 year old Americans, 85% already use SMS but of the 50-64 age group only 38% use and above 65 year olds, only 11% use SMS (which apart from using the in-built camera, is the most used service on the phone by all age groups even in America; as we've reported, SMS is the most widely used digital service on the planet, with over 2.4 billion users, over 74% of all mobile phone users worldwide use SMS text messaging, twice the number of all internet users and three times the number of email users)

But yes, the pattern holds across the ages for all services - Playing videogames on phones, the 18-29 year old segment has 47% doing it, while of the 50-64 age group only 13% play games (6% of the retired folks).

Of accessing the internet - fascinating area for many of our readers - 34% of Americans age 18-29 already access the web via cellphone, but again, 10% of the 50-64 age group and only 6% of the silver citizens.

Services want to be mobile

But lets move on, the Economist makes a good point discussing the value of mobility, starting from before mobile phones. They point out that the Sony Walkman taught us that music can be mobile (and personal). They also write that Blackberry has shown that email can be better when that is mobile. And now for many doubting a pocket computer/pocket internet paradigm, the iPhone is exploding that myth; obviously we can have a good enough pocket internet experience on an advanced phone. The Economist quotes Google stats that iPhone users access Google 50 times more than any other mobile handset. Mighty numbers indeed.

I think this is a very good observation and it applies so strongly to the themes on our blog. Just about any digital activity, whether watching TV or listening to radio or a podcast, or reading a website or blogsite, or indeed uploading to a blog - can be mobile, and should be mobile, and when it becomes mobile, the users will love it that it is mobile. It will not kill the stand-alone version - just like the Walkman did not kill the home stereo HiFi set, but it gives us a mobility, a freedom, a liberation, to enjoy our media more. And not just media - its the digital money, advertising, etc. All of it. Heading to a mobile near you.

Remote workers vs mobile workers

The Economist made a great point discussing mobile workers. The old model was that we tele-commute. That we have the internet connection at home, and we can connect to your work intranet from home, and with a phone (often mobile phone) and PC connected to the network at the office, we can work from home. Yes, this is a ground-breaking concept (from more than a decade ago, obviously) but the FAR more POWERFUL metaphor, is mobile working. Going from the dichotomous selection of only work or home, to any place. We can sit in the Starbucks and work. We can sit in the library and work (with the phone on silent, ha-ha). We can sit at the airport lounge and work. We can even sit on a park bench on a sunny day, enjoy the birds and bees and flowers and sunshine - and with a laptop and 3G data card, be connected anywhere - and work. I've done this, countless times since I got my 3G data card, from back when I lived in London, a sunny day (a rare occurance in London obviously, ha-ha), I would not go to the nearby coffee shop, I'd wander a bit further and sit at a park bench and enjoy working outside..

Its a greater freedom, a greater liberty, a greater mobility. Greater than WiFi. Anywhere. But I hadn't noticed this distinction of the remote worker paradigm, that yes, I was there early on delivering enterprise solutions for our network customers in New York including some secure remote working access for some employees 15 years ago, and then again enterprise solutions with some early GSM based mobility when at Elisa in Helsinki ten years ago. But yes, today, its no longer just the choice of "at work" or "at home" -- there is a vast area inbetween. We have a nice roof garden at this apartment building in Hong Kong, on a nice day, I'll take my laptop up there and work for 3 hours (until my battery dies ha-ha) and have a nice "alternate" work environment beyond the walls of my home or the nearest three coffee shops that I frequent regularly.

Gotta go to the toilet

I also loved the stuff about the toilet (no, I am not a fan of toilet humour). I've been saying for seven years now that yes, people take their phones to the toilet, and I have laughed at many specific variants of that - such as the early findings from South Korea, that one of the uses of the new digital TV superphones in Korea (one in five Koreans already has one of these, not the simplistic 3G TV services in most other countries, but like Japan, Italy, Finland etc, Korea is the world leader in true digital set-top box integration into the handset, imagine having TiVo on your phone, including pausing live TV etc). But yes, the funny part was, that one of the most used locations for mobile TV is.. .the bathroom.

So now the Economist mentions that Blackberry users who feel pressured in not looking at their phones at home, will take the BB to the bathroom and do their email addiction there. Ha-ha, exactly like teenagers with SMS that I've talked about earlier. I should have seen this coming, ha-ha..

Usage patterns

The Economist also took a very good look into the greater customer understanding that is emerging from studying voice and messaging patterns. A good finding was for example Telenor's sociologist, Richard Ling, who had noticed that half of all mobile phone calls and texts go from any given phone to only 3 or 4 people. Half of all fit such a tight circle of the closest friends (and/or family). And better yet, as we have this data in the cellular network, Ling also told the Economist, that these 4 people are within 10 kilometers (6 miles) of the caller. So we don't use the mobile phone to connect with many far-away friends, rather a few close friends who also are literally close to us, by proximity. The people who we see regularly already. This is something sociologists call strong ties and weak ties (as opposed to those who see consultant Tomi Ahonen and his silly ties, usually in some Ferrari-McLaren colour schemes ha-ha)

We've discussed this area very much at the Communities Dominate blog, and Alan Moore is working very closely with Social Analytics specialist firm Xtract for example, to study this area more deeply and really dig out the power from "the new black gold" as Alan calls it. We are only at the tip of an enormous iceberg. Mobile phone user data will put most of the customer survey companies out of business, mark my words, like the internet put most of the encyclopedia companies out of business, and Google put an end to library manual "card" searches. But yes, Alan and I will be blogging a lot about the new black gold, so we're on this story very much, ha-ha..  Happy to see the Economist picking up on this dimension about mobile.

M-Witness

Then the Economist looks at another societal effect of mobile, something I had not paid much attention to, even though we've reported on it in the book Communities Dominate Brands and on this blog. The use of mobile phones as witness technology. Yes, we know about citizen journalism (Ohmy News etc) and the Pope's funeral (cameraphones) and the Thanksgiving Day Tsunami (user-generated video from the beaches). But yes, the use of mobile phones, and SMS and cameraphones to provide proof, evidence, witness to issues of societal concern.

Like the monks being abused in Myanmar (former Burma), reported via SMS and picture messaging to the rest of the world. The Economist tells of the election in Sierra Leone, where riots were about to break out on false rumours of vote fraud. The 500 formal outside voting inspectors were quickly able to confirm that there was no vote fraud going on, and the riot was averted. This was because they all had mobile phones. In older vote inspections, the work was done on paper and findings found weeks after the election.

Its not just voting. Toys for example. There is a website in America, Healthy-toys.org which will let users send queries via SMS to find out of toys are dangerous (such as containing lead paint for example). Or health, in South Africa the spread of AIDS is tracked via services over SMS text messaging. A mobile phone based medical information service, DataDyne has been certified by the World Health Organization as the technical standard to allow medical data transfers from mobile to mobile for use in all of the developing world (where they don't have PCs and regular internet access, especially in rural areas; but every doctor even in Africa has a mobile phone).

Mobile phone services can help with all kinds of alerts and concerns from the quality of the air - London's airtext will tell you about pollution levels - to the dangers of exotic fish to eat - South Africa's Fishms will tell you whether to eat it or not.

Young and old

As I'm already 48 years old, I find it increasingly fascinating to read of any differences in us older people using technology (especially mobile phones) and the youth. And this became quite a serious professional pursuit as Alan and I discovered that there is a new generation appearing, Generation C for Community, obviously. So again, the Economist had found some good juicy bits. MIT's researcher Sherry Turkle reports that young and old use the phone differently when it comes to strong feelings. When us older people have something great (or sad) happen, we reach out with the phone to share a feeling. But young people, will actually use the phone to have a feeling. "I want to havef a feeling, so I need to make a call" is how Turkle reports young people think. Very interesting.

The same is true with calendaring and scheduling. Naomi Baron from the University of Washington explains that older people will feel a need to optimize their time, and their attitude to the mobile phone calendar, clock and SMS text messaging is to try to micro-coordinate the day. To try to lock down exact times for whatever and whoever. But again, young are the opposite. They prefer NOT to commit, and they know that the phone and SMS in particular allows them to postpone committing to as late as possible. Yes, we'll meet up today, but where and when, it will depend. So lets head downtown and figure out which bar or pub you are at, and where I am, and we'll then coordinate closer to the time when it happens.. Fascinating.

There was much more, but I wanted to touch on some of the main things that hit me when reading that very good special report on mobile telecoms in the Economist. Totally worth the read.

Original Source: Communities Dominate Brands