Cell Use Doubles Since 2000; to Hit 2 Billion by 2006
GENEVA – About one quarter of the world’s population now subscribes to mobile phone service, and one of the world’s largest handset manufacturers predicts the number of subscribers will increase by another 25 percent before 2006.
An annual report from the International Telecommunication Union on Thursday said mobile subscribers around the globe now number more than 1.5 billion, doubling the number of people with cellular service in 2000. The United Nations agency credited rapidly surging adoption in developing countries with the increase. There are now more mobile subscribers than fixed-line subscribers, the agency noted: Fixed line subscribers number 1.185 billion today, compared to 1 billion at the beginning of the millennium.
By mid-year 2004, subscribers in developing nations accounted for 56 percent of all mobile subscribers, representing 79 percent of the market’s growth during the past three and one-half years. The country with the largest subscriber base, China, reported 310 million users in July. That’s one fourth of its population and more than the entire population of the U.S. India and Russia reported subscriber increases of 25 percent (to 44.5 million) and 40 percent (to 60 million), respectively.
Manufacturer Nokia this week also revised its predictions for mobile subscriber growth worldwide, citing growth rates that have far outstripped expectations so far. On Wednesday, Ilkka Lakaniemi, an economist in the Finnish handset maker’s network division, estimated mobile subscriptions will reach more than 2 billion worldwide by 2006. Earlier this year, the company said it expected that milestone to be reached in 2008. Lakaniemi said companies that embrace mobility can expect to see productivity jump by as much as 6 percent.
While not ready to predict the death of land lines, Lakaniemi said that two of Europe’s oldest mobile markets, Finland and the United Kingdom, are seeing such a rapid reversal of fixed-line-versus-mobile ratios that mobile is expected to become fixed-line’s equal by 2008. Today, Finnish voice communication subscribers are split evenly between fixed-line and mobile users, and Nokia predicts that by 2008, fixed-line users in the U.K. will have fallen to below 60 percent of total callers.
The figures represent big money for service providers: In the decade between 1993 and 2003, global mobile revenues increased by a factor of 10 to $414 billion, while overall telecommunications revenue grew by an average of 8.8 percent to $1.1 trillion. According to the ITU report, in 2006 global revenues from mobile networks are likely to exceed those produced by fixed-line networks for the first time.
Child Porn Transmitted by Cell Phone
WELLINGTON, New Zealand – The first instance of a New Zealand cell phone being used to capture and post child pornography to the Web has been reported here, according to an item in the New Zealand Herald.
“We have to be more aware of the possibility that these phones are being used against children,” Child, Youth and Family Department Forensic Interviewer Gill Basher told a child abuse forum, as reported by the paper. “From the child’s position, it just looks as though someone is checking their phone.”
Basher also said the incident was reported to police and he believes it is before the courts.
The practice of using cell phone cameras to capture images of partially clothed or naked children in public places and then transmitting the digital images to the Web also has been reported in Britain.
Mozilla Maximizes Minimo
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. – Hoping to capitalize on the success of its latest Web browser, Mozilla is taking its show on the road in the form of a browser designed for phones, PDAs, and television set-top boxes: Mini Mozilla, or Minimo.
According to Minimo project leader Doug Turner, the slimmed-down version of Firefox already is being used by two unspecified cellular phone companies and is the subject of development talks between the Mozilla Organization and at least one television manufacturer.
“The focus over the last year and a half has been about going after the phone device and set-top manufacturers – showing them what we can do,” Turner told ZDnet. “We are being used, but companies have kept it quiet.”
Convincing manufacturers to embed the software into their products has been the challenge, he noted, because unlike in the browser market, device makers, not consumers, make the application decisions. However, by surmounting in large measure the obstacles posed by rendering Web pages on small screens, JavaScript coding, and frames, Minimo developers believe they’ve produced software that surpasses what is offered by the product’s main competitor, Opera, which has led the mobile browser market for six years. “With Minimo, if it renders OK in Firefox, it will render OK in Minimo,” Turner told ZDnet.
Minimo, like Firefox, is freeware, which makes it very attractive to hardware manufacturers. Opera is available as freeware to consumers, but the free versions are supported by advertising. Commercial versions without the ad messages are available to hardware manufacturers for a fee.
Minimo may face future challenges from the advertising sector, as one of the ways in which it reduces screen width is by minimizing advertisements.
Wireless Directory Called ‘Dumb Idea’
BEDMINSTER, NJ – A national survey conducted by TNS and sponsored by TRUSTe, a nonprofit online privacy certification organization, recently revealed that only one in 10 mobile phone users said they want to be listed in a wireless directory, and just three in 10 support the creation of such a directory. That news has Verizon Wireless calling the proposed creation of national wireless telephone directory a “dumb idea” and urging on its industry peers to stop pushing the directory on consumers who “clearly don’t want” it.
Earlier this year at The Yankee Group's Wireless Leadership Summit in New York, Denny Strigl, president and chief executive officer of Verizon Wireless, said, "As an industry, we should be proud of our strong record to date to proactively preserve customers' privacy in an intrusive world. Our industry has surrounded customers' information with a wall of privacy. Why would we want to tear down that wall – that unique advantage we provide – that we have spent two decades fortifying? Let's – as an industry – stop pushing something on customers that they clearly don't want. It's a dumb idea." The company has changed its customer contracts to state that it will not provide any of its 42 million consumer phone numbers for listing in directories.
The TNS survey, which polled 1,068 consumers, also revealed that more than half of mobile phone users (53 percent) are against the establishment of a nationwide directory of wireless numbers and that 56 percent would opt out of publishing their numbers.
DMA: Telemarketers Not Allowed to Plague Cell Phones
NEW YORK – The Direct Marketing Association on Friday issued a statement to alert consumers, legislators, and regulators that a bogus e-mail is causing anxiety about new proposed cell phone number directories. An urban myth in the making has been churned up by e-mails circulating widely across the United States saying that proposed directories of cell phone numbers are being compiled for use by telemarketers.
The DMA wants concerned people to know that although a cell phone directory may be composed, any efforts to use its contents for making unsolicited telephone marketing calls violates federal law. The law, the 1991 Telemarketing Consumer Protection Act (TCPA), makes it illegal for solicitation calls to be made to wireless phone numbers without clear permission from the individual to whom a number has been assigned.
As part of what it calls an “aggressive” program in cooperation with the U.S. Federal Communications Commission, the DMA has instituted two programs designed specifically to prevent even accidental unsolicited calls to wireless phones. The Wireless Block Identifier Service points out to the marketing community numbers that have been assigned as cell phone numbers; the Wireless Ported Number File identifies land-based phone numbers that have been converted to cell phone numbers and now may not be called without express permission from the person to whom the number has been assigned.
The DMA is a trade association for businesses and organizations interested in direct, interactive, and database marketing, which last year generated more than $1.7 trillion in U.S. sales, including $134 billion in catalog sales and $41 billion in Web-driven sales. In addition to catalogs and the Web, DMA members employ a wide variety of marketing media, including mail, e-mail, telephone, newspapers and magazines, interactive television, and radio, among others. Founded in 1917, the DMA today has more than 5,200 corporate, affiliate, and chapter members from the U.S. and 44 other nations.
Another Thing to Worry About: Tight Clothes Bust Phones
CYBERSPACE – As if exploding batteries weren’t enough of a concern…. Swedish handset maker Siemens, in conjunction with a group of 300 Swedish cellular phone retailers, has answered the age-old question, “What are the most common causes of cell phone demise?” In second place on the list is something of which adult entertainers should be aware: squeezing them into tight clothes.
The most common reason for handset malfunction, according to the survey, is accidentally dropping the phone on the ground. In third place on the list is exposure to water: “We notice that people use their cell phones directly after coming out from the shower or a gym session, even out in the rain,” Magnus Svensson, after-sales manager at The Phonehouse Sweden, told Cellular News.
Fourth through tenth places on the list are occupied by “intentional grounding” (throwing the handset in rage), pets and children playing with the device, dropping the phone in a toilet, dropping it into the sea, forgetting to retrieve the handset from the top of the car, getting perspiration on it during a workout, and dropping it in the snow.
Kinoma Debuts New Media Player
PALO ALTO, Calif. – Kinoma has introduced Kinoma Player 3 EX with support for industry standard file formats and advanced compression technologies. Users of Palm-powered smartphones and other mobile devices can employ Kinoma Player 3 EX to stream video, listen to CD-quality audio, and view high-resolution photographs, all from a single memory card.
Kinoma Player 3 EX features MPEG-4 video compression, the same high-quality video technology found in the latest digital video camera from Sanyo/Fisher and select mobile phones. MPEG-4 video compression allows more than seven hours of high quality video to be stored on a single 1GB memory card.
For audio, Kinoma Player 3 EX uses AAC (Advanced Audio Compression), making it possible to pack 30 percent more audio into a handheld than the older MP3 standard allowed. Using AAC audio compression, a single 1 GB memory card can store more than 22 hours of CD-quality audio. AAC audio is the featured audio compressor in Apple's iTunes software. Customers now can rip their audio CDs with iTunes and play them on their Palm Powered handheld using Kinoma Player 3 EX. Kinoma Player 3 EX can even display the album art from many iTunes files.
Kinoma Player 3 EX supports major digital media industry standard file formats. In many cases, users can take a memory card out of their digital camera, plug it into their handheld, and immediately view the video and photos using Kinoma Player 3. The MPEG-4 .MP4 file format is featured in Kinoma Player 3 EX as the most compact and compatible way to store digital video. Users also can play .3GP and .3G2 files captured by the built-in camera on many mobile phones. Kinoma Player 3 EX also supports viewing JPEG photographs and some QuickTime movies, as well as the Kinoma movie file format.
Kinoma Player 3 EX offers an innovative pan, zoom, and rotate feature for video and photographs so users can get exactly the view they want of their content. Pan, zoom, and rotate happen immediately, even when playing video. Kinoma Player 3 EX remembers where you left off watching a video or listening to a song, and can automatically start from that point the next time. The user interface of Kinoma Player 3 EX also makes it easy to find and play digital media. Media can be browsed by individual media type – video, audio, and photographs – or all at once. The media browser supports sorting and a new two-line detailed list view.
The company also introduced Kinoma Producer 3, a desktop companion application for Kinoma Player 3 EX. Kinoma Producer 3 allows users to optimize the video and audio files on their Windows or Mac OS X computers for playback on their Palm-powered handhelds. Kinoma Producer 3 compresses from most popular digital media file formats – including MPEG-1, MPEG-2, Windows Media Video, Windows Media Audio, QuickTime, AVI, DV, DivX, Wav, AIFF and MP3 – into compact industry standard MPEG-4 files. Kinoma Producer 3 includes presets for most Palm-powered handhelds, including those from palmOne, Tapwave, Sony, and Garmin.
Kinoma Player 3 EX Kinoma Website for $19.99. Kinoma Player 3 EX is compatible with all Palm Powered handhelds running Palm OS 5 (Garnet) or later. Kinoma Player 3 is available for download free of charge with registration, and is compatible with all Palm Powered handhelds running Palm OS 5 (Garnet) or later.
A free trial edition of Kinoma Producer 3 is available for download with registration. The full version of Kinoma Producer 3 can be purchased through the Kinoma Web site for $29.99. Kinoma Producer 3 requires Windows 98, Windows Me, Windows 2000, Windows XP, or Mac OS X.
