How Bright Is the Future of Mobile Technology?

We've all been hearing about how mobile technology is the next game-changing thing in innovation, but how big is the trend? In a December 2007 survey, the Pew Internet & American Life Project found that "62% of Americans are part of a wireless, mobile population that participates in digital activities away from home or work." Plunkett's Telecommunications Industry Almanac reports that as of 2007, the wireless industry was a $211 billion industry in the U.S. Pretty impressive, I'd say.

But if these stats aren't enough, some signs of the incredible growth and popularity of mobile technology can be found in stores right now. Taking a stroll down Chestnut St in San Francisco a couple weekends ago, I couldn't help but see how much excitement the mobile industry has created. In this case, it was evidenced by the long line snaking out of the Apple store as people waited for the new 3G iPhone, which has since rapidly passed 1 million units sold. A MarketingVox article reports from Nielsen's Buzz Metrics that 1% of all new blog posts running up to the release were about this latest iPhone, which earned a higher percentage of blog posts than were written about Barack Obama or John McCain.

Of course, not every city is quite like tech-savvy San Francisco or every region like the Bay Area. But what is most interesting about mobile technology to me are the global ramifications of the growth. MobileCrunch reported that mobile phone purchases are expected to increase by 10% worldwide in 2008. This follows up a strong 2007 year that saw 1.15 billion handsets purchased. The Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association reported 12.5 billion SMS messages were sent worldwide in 2006…each month!

Even with economic slowdowns expected in some quarters, the growth of the mobile industry seems to be marching on, buoyed up by developing countries. There are some huge markets that are just beginning to mature such as in India and China. Most people seem to already know that China has a lot of people, so here is a quick reminder that India's population isn't tiny either. As of July 2008, India's population is 1.1 billion people.

And consider this interesting tidbit: in the Philippines, mobile technology is greatly outstripping adoption of landline phone communication systems. Only half of the towns and cities in the Philippines have fixed-line service, but overall market penetration for mobile phones has already reached 60%. In many areas, this type of jump in technological advancement has occurred and will continue to occur as the practicality of mobile technology eclipses former technologies like copper wire. I mean why would you want to build the entire infrastructure for a landline when you can just put up a cell phone tower and be ready to go? Sure, it's not quite that simple, but you get the point.

So, when you hear lots of people getting excited about mobile technology, now you've got some of the figures to understand why people like us at jaxtr and other companies are so involved in mobile technology. It's my bet that we're only seeing just the tip of the iceberg of the growing mobile trend and that in the coming years, mobile communications will expand even faster. Pretty exciting, huh? Well, I probably should go stand in line now for an iPhone now.