Comments on: You Can Soon Talk to 5 Billion People on a Mobile Phone

By: Text Messages: No Longer the Domain of Carriers: Mobile Technology News «

Text Messages: No Longer the Domain of Carriers: Mobile Technology News « — Thu, 30 Dec 2010 22:15:58 +0000

[...] it may stagger some knowing the world has more than five billion mobile device subscriptions, that number is dwarfed by the number of text messages sent worldwide. The International [...]

By: Chips Don’t Lie: Mobile Is Hot: Tech News «

Chips Don’t Lie: Mobile Is Hot: Tech News « — Tue, 26 Oct 2010 15:40:57 +0000

[...] haven’t yet taken hold and even inexpensive feature phones are still considered scarce. With roughly 5 billion mobile subscribers on the planet, smartphones still don’t account for more than 10 percent of global handset sales, so [...]

By: Steven Daley

Steven Daley — Sun, 19 Sep 2010 15:45:28 +0000

Oops, I meant OLPC

By: Steve Daley

Steve Daley — Sat, 18 Sep 2010 10:57:35 +0000

What is happening with wireless mesh networking? I remember being quite excited by OLTP’s pioneering of 802.11s but don’t seem to have heard much about it since. The possibilities of wireless ad hoc networking between mobiles as well as the internet would seem to offer serious growth in low-cost data communication in poor countries.
I’d love to read a GigaOm article on developments in wireless mesh networks and peer to peer mobile data.

By: Jim Ayson

Jim Ayson — Sat, 18 Sep 2010 01:32:46 +0000

What’s cheaper than voice? In the developing world mobiles are cheaper and more ubiquitous than computers, but people don’t necessarily do voice calls or surf the web. They text (SMS) or if their phone has some sort of GPRS connection they can do messaging via IM. And yes, in some parts of the world, people have more than one phone, which explains why phone penetration exceeds 100% in some areas. – jim in manila

By: David Kralik

David Kralik — Fri, 17 Sep 2010 20:05:25 +0000

The figure cited about 5 billion subscriptions equating to roughly 73.4 percent of the global population is misleading. That implies that 100% of the population would be 6.8 billion.

But, it fails to take into account that people might have more than 1 phone subscription.

By: Brett Glass

Brett Glass — Fri, 17 Sep 2010 19:49:03 +0000

The Web is not “too expensive compared to voice.” You don’t get free voice in every coffee shop and McDonald’s! What’s more, computers cost less than cell phones.

The real reason why the Web is less used is that it requires at least minimal computing skills and we are not educating people properly. I still regularly encounter adults who do not know the meanings of the terms “icon,” “URL,” and “focus.”