Social on Mobile - The Next Wave in Communications or Revolutions?

These are Social & Mobile REVOLUTIONS that cause Revolutions

This post takes inspiration from where where my earlier post left off

There are two 'new' frontiers in the world of communications today - Mobile and Social, these two spaces are primarily a continuum and the overlap,

While the former  is receiving a huge amount of  public attention both solicited and unsolicited with the 2G Scam, and other skeletons crawling out of the woodwork. It is the impact of Social that is seen on the Regimes in the Middle East, starting with the Story of a Tunisian fruitseller, to the fall of the Egyptian & Libyan  Dictators, to the Rise of Anna Hazare.

"You can buy my hands, but have to WIN my heart" seems to be the dictum of today's youth, and to win it is difficult to say the least.

With the pace of change increasing exponentially, what took microsoft 20 years to accomplish, took google 10 and facebook about 3 years.

When seen in the light of my ealier post "Is it a Bird? Is it a Plane? Noooo! It’s a CELLPHONE!" - and the fact that our mobile phones today have as more computing power than Yuri Gagarin's Space Ship!


How many people would have been able to predict  or foresee such leaps in science & technology, such revolutions?

Do your reach for your phone or paper first thing in the morning?

Like our parents waited eagerly for their morning fix of  coffee & newspaper (to the point that most of you would recall the withdrawal and how uneasy they felt when the paper didn't arrive on time!)

Today youth don't wait for the newspaper to get the news, the first thing they reach for is their smartphone to read the latest tweets - Tweets & RSS Feeds are replacing print for today's youth.

As discussed earlier  The Paradigm Shift from the Ear to the Eye, the mobile phone basic functionality is now visual rather than auditory  - The Twitter Stream, The Facebook Update, The YouTube Video are the New HEADLINES - personalized, customized and delivered in Real Time.

Traditional Media like TV programmes today have have twitter id's (@thenewshour, @face_the_nation), Print publications have online editions  (TimesOfIndia.com),  E-Paper editions and RSS feeds, Radio programmes run facebook contests & campaigns.

The psyche of the youth is so ingrained with Social Media, so pervasive is this technology, that Scientific Studies have actually  found that Youngsters feel disoriented, when they are disconnected  (withdawal akin to dad's morning grumblings when the paper didn't come ;-)

This obviously can not be a good thing... or can it?

The impact of Social Media is seen on the Regimes in the Middle East & Asia, starting with the Story of a Tunisian fruitseller, to the fall of the Egyptian & Libyan  Dictators, to the Rise of Anna Hazare.

"When I first saw that he was getting in, I thought, 'Well, this has got to be a joke,'" the Boone-based evangelist told ABC's Christiane Amanpour. "But the more you listen to him, the more you say to yourself, 'You know? Maybe the guy's right.' -  Franklin Graham

The Paradigm Shift from the Ear to the Eye

Unfortunately, we have yet to come to terms with the fact that smartphones, are no longer phones but personal, pocket computers, with computational capacities that rival supercomputers of a few decades ago - Gigahertz speed, Gigabit rates, Gigabyte memories have all become common in today's mobile phone

However, as the pace of technology follows the three irrefutable laws of computing-

1) Bandwidth Demand - Shall always increase
2) Moore's Law - massive miniaturization with doubling densities every 2 years
3) Metcalfe's Law - the multiplier effect of communication networks

So have Mobile communication usage patterns begun to witness a Paradigm Shift from the Ear (Audio) to the Eye (Video) - you all will recall this one...


One of the Cisco System's Ads

And we all have  used Skype, Google Talk & Yahoo! Messenger  and heard (read?) the Buzz on the Apple iPhone's Facetime -  SEE it Here -

The implications of this video-telephony technology go way beyond just entertainment, but have the potential to substantially improve society touching aspects of Education, Health, Agriculture and

 Micro-finance( mCommerce, mBanking) are among the most amenable areas that come to my mind....

What are your thoughts?




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Android Platform Now Reaches More than 1 in 5 U.S. Smartphone Subscribers

comScore Reports September 2010 U.S. Mobile Subscriber Market Share - Nokia, Nokia... where art thou?

RESTON, VA, November 3, 2010 – comScore, Inc. (NASDAQ: SCOR), a leader in measuring the digital world, today released data from the comScore MobiLens service, reporting key trends in the U.S. mobile phone industry during the three month average period ending September 2010. 

The report ranked the leading mobile original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and smartphone operating system (OS) platforms in the U.S. according to their share of current mobile subscribers ages 13 and older, and reviewed the most popular activities and content accessed via the subscriber’s primary mobile phone. The September report found Samsung to be the top handset manufacturer overall with 23.5 percent market share, while RIM led among smartphone platforms with 37.3 percent market share.

OEM Market Share

For the three month average period ending in September, 234 million Americans ages 13 and older used mobile devices. Device manufacturer Samsung ranked as the top OEM with 23.5 percent of U.S. mobile subscribers, up 0.7 percentage points from the three month period ending in June. LG ranked second with 21.1 percent share, followed by Motorola (18.4 percent share), RIM (9.3 percent share, up 0.5 percentage points) and Nokia (7.4 percent share).

Top Mobile OEMs 3 Month Avg. Ending Sep. 2010 vs. 3 Month Avg. Ending Jun. 2010 Total U.S. Mobile Subscribers Ages 13+ Source: comScore MobiLens
	Share (%) of Mobile Subscribers
	Jun-10	Sep-10	Point Change
Total Mobile Subscribers	100.0%	100.0%	N/A
Samsung	22.8%	23.5%	0.7
LG	21.2%	21.1%	-0.1
Motorola	20.5%	18.4%	-2.1
RIM	8.8%	9.3%	0.5
Nokia	8.1%	7.4%	-0.7

Smartphone Platform Market Share

58.7 million people in the U.S. owned smartphones during the three months ending in September, up 15 percent from the preceding three month period. RIM was the leading mobile smartphone platform in the U.S. with 37.3 percent share of U.S. smartphone subscribers, followed by Apple with 24.3 percent share. Google continues to gain ground in the market, rising 6.5 percentage points to capture 21.4 percent of smartphone subscribers. Microsoft accounted for 10.0 percent of smartphone subscribers, while Palm rounded out the top five with 4.2 percent. Despite losing share to Google Android, most smartphone platforms continue to gain subscribers as the smartphone market overall continues to grow.

Top Smartphone Platforms 3 Month Avg. Ending Sep. 2010 vs. 3 Month Avg. Ending Jun. 2010 Total U.S. Smartphone Subscribers Ages 13+ Source: comScore MobiLens
	Share (%) of Smartphone Subscribers
	Jun-10	Sep-10	Point Change
Total Smartphone Subscribers	100.0%	100.0%	N/A
RIM	40.1%	37.3%	-2.8
Apple	24.3%	24.3%	0.0
Google	14.9%	21.4%	6.5
Microsoft	12.8%	10.0%	-2.8
Palm	4.7%	4.2%	-0.5

Mobile Content Usage

In September, 67.0 percent of U.S. mobile subscribers used text messaging on their mobile device, up 1.4 percentage points versus the prior three month period, while browsers were used by 35.1 percent of U.S. mobile subscribers (up 2.2 percentage points). Subscribers who used downloaded applications comprised 33.1 percent of the mobile audience, representing an increase of 2.5 percentage points. Accessing of social networking sites or blogs increased 1.8 percentage points, representing 23.2 percent of mobile subscribers. Playing games represented 23.1 percent of the mobile audience (up 0.5 percentage points), while listening to music increased 0.8 percentage points, representing 15.2 percent of subscribers.

Mobile Content Usage 3 Month Avg. Ending Sep. 2010 vs. 3 Month Avg. Ending Jun. 2010 Total U.S. Mobile Subscribers Ages 13+ Source: comScore MobiLens
	Share (%) of Mobile Subscribers
	Jun-10	Sep-10	Point Change
Total Mobile Subscribers	100.0%	100.0%	N/A
Sent text message to another phone	65.6%	67.0%	1.4
Used browser	32.9%	35.1%	2.2
Used downloaded apps	30.6%	33.1%	2.5
Accessed social networking site or blog	21.4%	23.2%	1.8
Played Games	22.6%	23.1%	0.5
Listened to music on mobile phone	14.4%	15.2%	0.8

About comScore
comScore, Inc. (NASDAQ: SCOR) is a global leader in measuring the digital world and preferred source of digital marketing intelligence. For more information, please visit www.comscore.com/companyinfo.

Blogs are Old Hat …. NOT!

Just because “Two Pew Internet Project surveys of teens and adults reveal a decline in blogging among teens and young adults and a modest rise among adults 30 and older” - All media has gone crazy touting that “millennials” (people born after 1982) do not twitter or blog,

Then what do they do? According to Pew- only Facebook and SMS.

You can read some of the media madness at - http://news.google.com/news/story?cf=all&ned=in&hl=en&ncl=dV9Cy1xBrXROo_MTMm7tvnQwF7OcM

I have 2 opinions on this –

First, the Pew Survey samples could be suspect,

OR, more importantly,

Second, youngsters & teens, irrespective of year of birth, have always been self-referral, I remember clearly that at that age, we always knew everything, and let alone others’ opinions, ‘others’ did not matter, so communicating with them was irrelevant and futile, because the “others” were all idiots.

So micro-blogging on twitter, writing a blog or communicating an opinion to the “others” really was a waste of time and energy. To quote the epic (and perhaps the millennials’ archaic) Pink Floyd - “We don’t need no education” is the motto of this age group.

I opine that far from being Dead, blogs are going to “Rule The Roost”… just give the millennials another five years and see how they take to surfing Blogs – like Ducks to Water!

You can read more of Pew’s opinions at -   http://pewresearch.org/millennials/

What’s YOUR take?