Smartphone Subscribers Now Drive Mobile Browser Use

The number of Smartphone users accessing mobile content through browsers and applications now surpasses that of non-smartphone users, says comScore. In the three-month period ending August 2010, smartphone subscribers made up 60 percent of those who used a downloaded application and 55 percent of those who used a browser.

In August 2010, 75.6 million mobile subscribers ages 13 and older used downloaded applications, with smartphone users representing 60.4 percent, up from 43.6 percent in August 2009. For the same period, 80.8 million mobile subscribers used their browser, with smartphone subscribers comprising 55.5 percent, up from 41.4 percent a year ago.

Smartphone Subscribers Now Comprise Majority of Mobile Browser and Application Users in U.S.

North American Mobile App Revenues will Reach $10 Billion in 2015

North American mobile revenues from mobile content and applications will total $10 billion in 2015, according to Juniper Research.

Juniper predicts 150 percent growth from $4 billion in mobile content and mobile apps revenue earned in 2009.

North American Mobile Revenues will Reach $10B in 2015:

Windows Mobile 7 is Important for Microsoft,Gets AT&T Help

 Microsoft Corp. will formally unveil a lineup of smartphones using the revamped version of its mobile operating system on Oct. 11, and AT&T will begin offering them four weeks later, on an exclusive basis at least initially, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Samsung Abandons Symbian

Samsung has decided it will no longer be supporting the Symbian mobile operating system, as of the end of this year.

Sony Ericsson last month announced it would be dropping Symbian as well.

Fujitsu, Sharp, and Nokia seem to be the remaining firms still building and selling Symbian devices, at least over the last 12-month period.

Symbian takes another hit, loses support from Samsung

Health reform to worsen doctor shortage by 50% in 2015

Unfortunately, says a new report from the the Association of American Medical Colleges, the U.S. health insurance legislation will worsen a shortage of physicians as millions of newly insured patients seek care, Reuters reports.

The group's "Center for Workforce Studies" released new estimates that showed shortages would be 50 percent worse in 2015 than forecast.

'While previous projections showed a baseline shortage of 39,600 doctors in 2015, current estimates bring that number closer to 63,000, with a worsening of shortages through 2025,' the group says.

'The United States already was struggling with a critical physician shortage and the problem will only be exacerbated as 32 million Americans acquire health care coverage, and an additional 36 million people enter Medicare, the report says.

Other groups, such as the nonprofit Rand Corporation and the Institute of Medicine, have also projected various physician shortages.

Once might infer something else, as well. Since medical care is subject to laws of supply and demand, just as any other commodity would be, the effect of increasing demand without increasing supply will cause costs to go up. You might remember this very basic relationship from high school or college economics. 

It isn't exactly an "unintended consequence." Observers, not limited to medical practitioners, had been warning of just that problem before the health insurance reform was made law.

Health reform to worsen doctor shortage: group | Reuters

T-Mobile Says 4G Can Wait

It isn't clear whether the latest statements from T-Mobile USA about fourth-generation networks, its preference for air interface or its timetable for 4G migration necessarily add much new insight about what T-Mobile USA might do in the future about its own 4G choices.

Some will speculate that the firm's clear preference for LTE mean it would not invest in Clearwire under any circumstances.

That is among the inferences one could draw, but not by any means the only conclusion. It is correct that T-Mobile USA has some time to make a firm 4G decision, given its recent HSPA+ upgrade that will support bandwidth highly comparable to LTE.

As far as its ultimate migration to 4G, it remains unclear whether there is any path for gaining the needed 4G spectrum other than leasing it from a partner, or possibly investing in Clearwire or some other firm that does have spectrum assets.

Some will point to T-Mobile USA's preference for LTE, not WiMAX, as evidence an investment in Clearwire, or buying wholesale capacity from Clearwire, is not a likely option. But that assumes Clearwire will run WiMAX as its own protocol, and will not, in fact, light an LTE network that runs alongside its current WiMAX network.

Both Clearwire and Sprint Nextel executives (Sprint is the majority owner of Clearwire) have said there is no technological barrier to running LTE alongside WiMAX, or ultimately even in some mode that essentially replaces WiMAX.

“We’ll look towards LTE at the right point in time for us,” Neville Ray, T-Mobile USA’s chief network officer, told Bloomberg.

“That ecosystem is going to be much richer than the competing one from WiMax, which is really a niche play,” Ray said. Most observers now would agree with the general outlines of that position.

Fourth-generation LTE networks promise average download speeds of about 10 megabits per second, compared with 1.7 megabits per second for 3G. But HSPA+ boasts speeds comparable to the LTE speeds AT&T and Verizon Wireless have been saying would be available commercially.

T-Mobile Says 4G Can Wait, Clearwire WiMax Is ‘Niche’

Social Media Someday Will be as Foundational a Tool as Email

One day, the tools we call "social media" will be like the fax machine or email. We’ll wonder how business got done without them.

We aren't there yet, but it's coming. Social media will as routine as customer service and technical support groups, a routine part of the sales and marketing mix.

Mission Unaccomplished | jatiN mahindrA doT coM