mobility

Mobile Internet Growth Validated

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Back in June 2008 when I wrote my blog and presentation about the The Mobile Internet Revolution is Here, there were some detractors who said that others had predicted that for years with little results to show.  In that presentation I applied the principles of the Tipping Point. The latest data indicates explosive growth over the past year.  The Fierce Mobile article about a Quantcast report points to 148% growth in the mobile web usage in 2009.  According to this source, mobile page views represent 1.3% of all web page views for North America. The report seems to focus just on page views from browsers, so misses all the other mobile internet traffic generated by client software on mobile devices that receives and sends email or Twitter messages, pushes news stories, etc. The Mobile Internet Revolution is indeed already here.
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Cellular "Sin" Tax -- or Just Short-Sightedness?

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So now municipalities have discovered that cellular customers need their service so much that they are willing to pay extra taxes. In the article "In Cities Facing Budget Deficits, Cellphone Becomes a Taxpayer" in the New York Times, Ken Belson tells about the extra taxes the users will bear. Haven't they heard the story about killing the Golden Goose? Of course people will pay these taxes in the short term. Cell phones have become a necessity. But the long-term implications of this extra burden for cell phones is dangerous. Maybe the cell phone companies are learning, as did the Local Exchange Carriers, that the highest return on their dollar is money invested in lobbying. And we all know that "power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely".
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