Posts Tagged ‘Tomi Ahonen’

Difference Between Smartphones and Feature Phones

Monday, January 17th, 2011

N97 vs N8 Dial Screens - Share on OviIn a lead-up to reading the Tomi Ahonen Phone Book that we told you would be a good holiday wad/gift, also check out one of the latest posts at his site Communities Dominate Brands where he speaks about the differences between smartphones and feature phones. Here’s a snippet:

The PC industry sells a little over 300 million PCs this year. That includes all desktops, laptops, notebooks, netbooks and the tablet PCs like the iPad and Kindle. A little over 300 million sold per year. Similarly television sets sell in that scale, about 300 million per year. And DVD players sell in the 250 million range annually. These are the global giants in electronics, the others of our favorite gadgets, like videogaming consoles or digital cameras or MP3 players like the iPod, sell in far smaller numbers per year. Except for one gadget. The mobile phone. The world sees sales of 1.37 Billion mobile phones sold in just this past year! You see why I am so excited about this industry? Just smartphones alone will sell very close to 300 million units this year, and yes, next year more smartphones will be sold than all types of personal computers, combined.

Read the rest at Communities Dominate Brands.

We are going to work on doing a better job of addressing the difference in approaches when these two types of mobile devices are considered. Take for example the recent changes to the Mobile Bible Apps page, smartphones have gotten a good bit of attention, but there’s much more that can and should be done for feature phones (Java/Non-Smartphones). Stay tuned.

 

7 Bits of Holiday Reading

Tuesday, December 21st, 2010

Dickens, The Life of Our Lord - image via Open LibraryFor as much as the holiday is great for family and rest, its also a good time to get some reading in. Here are a few items that have come in recently which might make for engaging reading and reflecting on a new or old mobile reading device:

Do you have some interesting reads that you will be engaging in this holiday season? Share yours in the comments or via Twitter.

 

Preview of 2010 Mobile Stats from Tomi Ahonen

Friday, November 26th, 2010

Always worth a read for his opinions and analyses of the mobile industry, Tomi Ahonen (Communities Dominate Brands, Mobile as 7th of the Mass Media, etc.) has given a preview of an upcoming publication of mobile statistics for 2010. Here’s a preview of some of the information contained in that post:

  • 5.2 Billion mobile phone subscriptions (across just under 7 billion of the total world population)
  • 3.75 unique mobile phone subscriptions
  • 1.3 Billion new phones sold
  • 12% of phones owned are second-hand; 17% of phones are smartphones
  • 4.1 Billion active users of SMS; 1.35 billion active users of MMS; 1.5 billion active users of the mobile internet

Tomi’s data is one of the few places one can get an entire picture of what’s happening globally and his next almanac will be chock full of these and other very notable stats about mobile, mobile use, and upcoming trends.

Take a gander at the noted stats in detail at his preview post. And contemplate just how much more attention to mobile you’ll need to pay in the year to come as mobile is more than even something global and personal at the same time.

 

Myths and Misconceptions of Mobile

Friday, May 28th, 2010

One of the (longer) readings that has come from the mobile blogsphere has been a piece called Everything You Wanted to Ask About Mobile But Were Afraid To Ask by Tomi Ahonen (Communities Dominate Brands, Mobile as 7th of the Mass Media, etc.). This piece is an excellent primer towards mobile from a high (and probably nearly mid-)level perspective, and yet is about the right kind of perspective that’s needed for such a field. Here’s a snippet of that piece:

…And do remember, that is global numbers. Two thirds of the planet means we now cover people who are refugees from wars, living in poverty etc. On the planet there are 800 million people of reading age who are illiterate, 1.6 billion people live beyond the reach of electricity, and 900 million are children under the age of 7. There are more people with mobile phones than have access to running water. More mobile phone subscribers on the planet than use a toothbrush (its true!). Yet even across all these hardships, the mobile has spread so rapidly that there was a mobile phone for two thirds of the planet at the start of this year, and will be 75% of planet Earth’s population by the end of this year…

It is no longer an issue of whether mobile is here, now it’s time to address our perceptions and possibilities because it is.

Update: Read more about MMM’s coverage of SMS in mobile.

 

The Digital Divide and Mobile Stats from Tomi Ahonen

Thursday, November 19th, 2009

Last week, Tomi Ahonen published a pretty extensive post detailing the regional breakdown of mobile across industralized and developing nations. Lots of number, long post, but best quoted piece is:

…By every measure, mobile is the giant, the only giant, and the other technologies are the lilliputs. If you intend to communicate with prospective customers in the Developing World today, then you cannot think of mobile as the ‘fourth screen’ and consider possibly including it in your communication mix, as we still can think in the Industrialized World, as a luxury today. No, in the Developing World mobile is the first screen – and obviously, for as many as 1.8 billion people – one quarter of the planet – it is the ONLY screen. These 1.8 billion people do not have a PC, not a TV, not even FM radio, but they have a live, active mobile phone account. Out of all 3 billion people in the Developing World who have some kind of connection, a massive 60% have no other way to connect, than their mobile phone…

Yep, just like everything else in the Body, you have to have the same perspective of the people that you are speaking to in order to have a ministry that walks in step with their heart’s condition (1 Cor. 12-14).

So read the post, then just make sure that you are walking in the regional and cultural understanding of these mobile-booming times.

Additional impressions by Tomi from 3GSM Asia.