According to Gartner, mobile email will become more widely used than text messaging although "it may be quite some time until mobile email completely overtakes SMS."

This is an interesting story (via Information Governance) that is more about the continued adoption of wireless email than it is about it "killing" SMS.  The safer prediction here is that 20% of all email accounts (some 350 million) will be wireless by 2010.  I think the point made in the comments to this story is spot on.

Email will continue to be widely used but I’m not ready to sound the death knell for text messaging as a result of increased email usage via mobile devices.  While I am not a heavy text messaging user, I do use it and the next generation of workers depends on it.  How those personal communications via text message will displace or replace email is yet to be seen.  There will be an evolution to different ways to message, communicate, and share files based on the action required, the recipients targeted, and sensitivity of the content.

This little nugget hasn’t gotten near the coverage it should have as the gushing and accolades (plus a few gripes) roll in for Apple’s newest creation.  RIM’s Blackberry devices are set to go on sale in China in August via China Mobile.  Think the Chinese will experience the addictive grip of these little joys?  You bet.  Here’s the story from the BBC.  Apple might make the iPhone in China, but you can’t buy one there.

Looks like it according to FCC Chairman Kevin Martin:

"Whoever wins this spectrum has to provide … truly open broadband network — one that will open the door to a lot of innovative services for consumers"

Full story on his comments here.  So what does a spectrum auction have to do with anything?  We are talking about the 700MHz wireless spectrum that can be transmitted like TV signals and is being vacated as TV stations go digital. Why is it appealing?  Because it transmits through walls and across rural areas just like TV signals.  What’s the big deal about it being open?  We consumers will get our choice of phone or device and can load the software we want and not have to take what the wireless carrier wants to sell.  Or as Mr. Martin states "You can use any wireless device and download any mobile broadband application, with no restrictions."

Great news.

Enter the free market, capitalist, former FCC Chairman types who want to move in on the wireless crown jewels of AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, & TMobile (that they made the investment to build out).  Combine that with a public policy angle intended to provide police/fire with wireless access and you get Frontier Wireless and former FCC Chairman Reed Hundt.   The stakes are high as Hundt ran the spectrum auctions in the mid-90s and getting access to these means serious opportunity for new players. 

Even Google has a stake in this calling for the above mentioned open platform but has decided not to participate in the auction due to the fact that "incumbent carriers have built-in advantages that will prove difficult to overcome".  Wow…something Google can’t/won’t buy.

Meanwhile, companies like my Kirkland neighbor Clearwire are building this "wimax" type of service offering today having inked deals with DirectTV & Echostar and banking on filling the void as the transition out of the 700mhz spectrum takes place.  Here’s some commentary on that.

The end result will certainly be beneficial as more mobile connectivity is better than less but it promises to be interesting to watch play out.

Updated:

Looks like I was wrong on my point above about something Google won’t buy. 

Interesting story via the BBC on using mobile phone signals as a way to identify congestion and population concentrations. 

This article talks about an MIT project in Rome where mobile signals are being used to understand how and when people use different parts of the city. 

This takes data used for network capacity planning and puts it to work in a different way.  Pretty interesting…

This struck me last week while I was traveling and has been stuck in my head since.  Given all the hype around Apple’s new gadget (talk about a masterful job of PR around a product launch) and a short blurb in today’s Seattle Times Tech Tracks, I thought a post on it would be appropriate. 

The proliferation of mobile devices means that people never have to be alone be it walking through an airport, shopping, commuting, etc.  I see this everywhere (and maybe am a little guilty of it as well) where people are flipping their phones open, sending a text message, typing an email, or talking on the phone (or at least being connected to another human – talking optional).  It’s something BusinessWeek calls "iSolation."

Even more interesting is to watch what happens when someone in a group is on their phone or sending a message.  Just like Pavlov’s dog, the conditioned response makes the others fumble with their phones especially if there are only two people – the one not talking looks for connection via their device. 

Maybe I’m in the minority here but I think it’s important to be alone every once in while…

Ok, to be fair the Apple Newton was before Jobs returned but I think there are some interesting parallels on these two products.  The Newton was a bit early to market and had a few hiccups including ease of text entry.  The market for PDAs exploded and Apple was not in it.  Fast forward 15 years and here we are with the iPhone.  True, folks like their iPods, they like their cell phones, and mobile devices are being utilized more and more to connect to the internet albeit at slow speeds so it appears the market is demanding these capabilities. 

So, I go back to the text entry piece.  The absence of a Qwerty keyboard or any type of keypad may create some problems.  Here’s Fred Wilson’s observation on that very thing.

I did a bit of searching on this and came across this post by Phil Baker who managed development on the Newton.  Here’s his take:

"So what are we to make of the buildup for the iPhone? The hype is certainly similar and the stakes are just as high for Apple. Ironically, concerns voiced by analysts are the same: battery life, pricing, and especially the ease of entering text.

There are major differences.  There’s already a market for cool looking iPods and cellular phones. And there’s a need for better ways to connect to the Internet. The iPhone will likely perform these functions with aplomb. However, unless people can conveniently input text into the device, the iPhone could be the next big disappointment."

"It’s about what to design and when to design, because human behaviour changes very slowly; technology changes very quickly."

This quote is from a BBC article about Jan Chipchase who is a researcher at Nokia Design.  He has a pretty cool job – travels the world and watches how people use their phones to understand where product design needs to go.  As part of the process, he brings designers along so they can see first hand and uses a qualitative market research approach called convergent validity.

Mr Chipchase’s focus is on the uses to which people put their phones; where they keep them, how they answer them, and a million other details about our relationships with these devices that have helped shape our world.

Here’s an eye-catching statistic from the story:

By 2009 more than four billion people in the world – out of a population of 6.3 billion – are expected to have a mobile phone connection in their lives.

That’s 64% of the global population! 

Another data point that confirms mobile devices will become ubiquitous and be the way most of the world’s population connects for the first time.

Great post from Bankers Ball on what the world would be like without these "helpful" little devices.  Here’s the link for the full post. 

My favorite – "I wouldn’t fear the blinking red light"

If this isn’t an indication of the expanding coverage areas for mobile devices, you can now place a call or send a text message from the peak of Mt. Everest.  Couple of interesting points in this story from the BBC- the message Rod Baber left on the Motorola-sponsored voice mail box included descriptions of the following:

1.  The view (what he was looking at)
2.  How cold it was (the temperature)
3.  What he would do back at base camp (what was next)

So, I guess we now have an answer to the question of what you talk about from the top of Mt. Everest.  Remarkably similar to what people do while getting on a plane or any other mundane activity and choose to be on the phone.

"Just getting on a plane here…pretty crowded flight with lots of kids.  Cold here but looks like rain is stopping.  Can wait to get to the lake this weekend."

Many years ago as a consultant, I worked with a few of the then red-hot mobile satellite communications companies that wanted to bring wireless service to the world via low earth orbit (LEO) satellites.  While doing the market study work, we identified this little trend call terrestrial network build-out and that it would rapidly fill the coverage void present at the time (1997-98).

Not to mention that
satellite phones were huge, expensive to buy, expensive to use, and
didn’t work inside (oops). Motorola rolled the dice with Iridium at that time and along with other backers dropped more than $5 billion into the project.  Who wouldn’t have wanted one of these "little" beauties? 

Interesting article from the Daily Mail in the UK (via the Drudge Report) citing a reduction in cell phone usage in favor of cheaper and silent text and email.

JD Power conducted a survey of more than 2,000 people – both contract and pre-pay customers and found the following nuggets:

Average number of calls has fallen 28.5% and 23% for pre-pay and contract customers, respectively, from last year.

Average number of texts rose from 32 a week to 46.

Not sure if agree with the notion that the decline in use is due to a phone no longer being seen as a “status symbol” but I certainly do agree that text and email are growing both based on the capabilities of the mobile devices available now and the fact that it is a less costly way to communicate than burning your voice minutes.