Vodafone Mobile Charger Could Save Up to $10 Billion Annually in Travel Costs

Perhaps 500 million to 600 million mobile phone users globally have no ready access to electricity sources to recharge their mobile phones and other devices. Another 750 million "struggle" to find ready electrical sources. 

Those users spend perhaps $10 billion annually traveling to places that do have electricity so they can recharge their devices. But Vodafone now is supplying portable chargers across Tanzania, to help solve that problem. 

The chargers can be powered by a bicycle dynamo or a solar panel. In a trial program conducted last year, mobile phone users with the Ready Setcharger spent an average of 14 percent more time on their phone. Vodafone will be selling the chargers at the places uses typically recharge their phones. 

Are Mobile Networks Now Supplements to Fixed Networks?

For a decade and a half, some observers have argued that Wi-Fi networks could emerge as alternatives or replacements for the mobile network. The speculation seemed to peak in 2002 and 2003, when there was lots of speculation about potential community or metro Wi-Fi networks. These days, Wi-Fi generally is seen as a complement to the mobile network.

Some might argue that the mobile network now is secondary, in some cases, to Wi-Fi networks. Cable operators, among some others, hope that is the case, since it would shift the perception of fixed networks.

Olivier Baujard, Deutsche Telekom's chief technology officer, says that in the Netherlands, “mobile” phones actually are used more as untethered devices. where 45 percent of traffic is from home, 45 percent is from work, and only 10 percent is while "walking, driving a car, taking a bus, or things like that." In other words, the mobile network is the access mechanism only about 10 percent of the time.

The ability to substitute Wi-Fi for mobile connections is less robust in areas of lower density, though. Buit Wi-Fi covers most of the places where people are, most of the time. Some 80 percent of the time, people connect to the mobile Internet from their home, office, or other indoor location—all areas that are addressable by Wi-Fi. Cisco says.

The other angle is that most of the apps people use are not specifically tied to “mobile,” on the go use cases. According to Cisco, about 66 percent of all smart phone application use involves email, web browsing, gaming, productivity tools or video calls that do not intrinsically involve a “mobile” use case.   

In addition, 80 percent of people's data traffic comes from just three cell phone towers--one near home, one near work, and one someplace in between, the Deutsche Telekom executive said.

That is one important reason why end user bandwidth consumption has to be measured across all available networks people use, one might argue. For example, U.K. Android users send and receive 78 percent of all their 3G data over WiFi networks, according to Nielsen.

Globally, 33 percent of total mobile data traffic was offloaded onto the fixed network through Wi-Fi or femtocell in 2012, according to Cisco.  In 2012, without offload, mobile data traffic would have grown 96 percent rather than 70 percent.

But consumption might change as more users switch to the faster fourth generation Long Term Evolution networks. The reason is that faster networks almost always lead to more data consumption.

The implication is that total data consumption cannot be assessed using usage data from any single network.

“Offloading” increases each hour after 5pm, building to a peak between 11pm and midnight, when 90 percent of data transferred uses Wi-Fi.  Conversely, 3G data transfer tends to peak just before the working day starts, again at lunchtime, and finally during the early evening commute when users cannot rely so much on a Wi-Fi connection.
Nielsen Smartphone Analytics.

David Gosen, Nielsen European managing director for digital, said “Wi-Fi is on average three-and-a-half times more dominant than 3G when it comes to delivering mobile internet data services. It peaks around midnight as users gravitate towards social networks."

Samsung Galaxy S III and iPhone 5 Web Usage Finally Equivalent?

The amount of Web traffic generated by Samsung Galaxy S III and iPhone 5 users is a near-50/50 split, with iPhone 5 commanding a slight one percent lead over the Galaxy S III, a new analysis by Chitika suggests. 

This is a change from Chitika's last study in October 2012, where the  iPhone 5 had an eight percentage point lead over the Galaxy S III, Chitika notes. 

That possibly is significant, since earlier studies had suggested that Android users, for whatever reason, used their web browsers less than iOS users. 

Of course, one also has to note that comparing "one retail brand" against all other "competing brands using a specific operating system" is not really an apples to apples comparison. Still, many studies over the last couple of years have shown a big discrepancy between web usage by iPhone and iOS users and people using Android devices. 

Some have argued that Android handsets are somewhat popular within the tech early-adopter market, but that volume adoption is driven by  consumers using low-end, cheaper smart phones.

The implications, some would argue, are that Android represents a less attractive platform for advertising, commerce and other ways of wringing value out of an installed base of smart phone end users.

iPhone users completely dominated Internet-based smart phone activities in a recent study. 

A recent survey of mobile web usage found that 60 percent of mobile web visits came from iOS devices.

A study IBM did of Black Friday online sales showed much the same thing, suggesting that iOS (iPads and iPhones) devices represented 20 percent of Black Friday sales.

Why VoIP is “Disruptive,” iPhone Is Not

In order for a company to disrupt a market, the revenue and cost structure of the incumbents that the company faces must keep them from responding. By that test, VoIP is disruptive, but the Apple iPhone, though a transforming technology, actually is not disruptive, oddly enough. 

Disruption, though sometimes equated with "better products," is more than that. Disruption of a market occurs when an incumbent in the market finds it almost impossible to respond to a disruptive product. 

That can happen because the incumbent's cost structure means the incumbent really cannot serve some customers. In some cases, that means a disrupting company can build a market out of a segment that the market leaders cannot afford to serve.  

People sometimes say a technology is "disruptive." It’s more appropriate to call the business model “disruptive," in that sense. 

Characteristics of disruptive businesses, at least in their initial stages, can include:  lower gross margins, smaller target markets, and simpler products and services that may not appear as attractive as existing solutions when compared against traditional performance metrics, according to Professor Clayton Christensen. 

Because these lower tiers of the market offer lower gross margins, they are unattractive to other firms moving upward in the market, creating space at the bottom of the market for new disruptive competitors to emerge.

Some examples of disruptive could include:

Disruptor	Disruptee
Personal computers	Mainframe and mini computers
Mini mills	Integrated steel mills
Cellular phones	Fixed line telephony
Community colleges	Four-year colleges
Discount retailers	Full-service department stores
Retail medical clinics	Traditional doctor’s offices

Women Have Less Access to Internet, Everywhere

WhatsApp Adoption Nearly 100% in Spain

According to Mobidia Technology, messaging apps get used hundreds of seconds to nearly a thousand seconds a month, in some markets. 

Separately, Mobidia reports, Wi-Fi usage has tended to decline, where Long Term Evolution is available, suggesting that users tend to rely on 4G more than 3G. And, no surprise, where LTE is used, the total amount of data consumed rises. 

Cable Operators Will Have 11% Share of Small Business Communications Market Share by 2017

source: Atlantic-ACM