Digital Lifescapes

With the global economy showing signs of a deep recession, mobile phone usage will continue to escalate, regardless. In a recent market study by ABI Research, mobile messaging services revenues are forecast to grow from $151 billion in 2008 to greater than $212 billion globally by 2013. Supply side drivers will be of primary importance for maintaining this level of growth. ABI's principal analyst Dan Shey said "Mobile messaging ARPUs are 85+ percent of all handset data services revenues regardless of region and will remain so for many years." As messaging involves all the biggest players in the mobile industry there will be incentives for all mobile messaging suppliers to work cooperatively to serve customers well and propel all parties through these rough economic waters. The important messaging suppliers include operators, device OEMs, content providers and middleware vendors. But although these suppliers can make the mobile messaging experience as pleasurable as possib...

In-Stat conducted a survey of their Technology Adoption Panel to determine what devices road warriors -- defined as those who travel five or more days in a typical month -- travel with, and what interface options they use. The results from 522 respondents show that these Digital Nomad travelers carry several devices, and stay connected through multiple interface options. The results show that 85 percent travel with a notebook PC, 66 percent with a mobile phone, 43 percent with a smart phone (defined as a combination mobile phone and computing device), 53 percent with a headset, 38 percent with a portable media player, 21 percent with an external storage drive, and 17 percent with a PDA. In terms of notebook connectivity, business travelers depend primarily on Wi-Fi, USB and Ethernet as their lifelines on the road. Wi-Fi was used by 93 percent of road warriors with notebooks, while USB was used by 84 percent and Ethernet by 72 percent. Those using Wi-Fi in their notebook employed it to ...