Mobile - Video & Transcript

Transcript

Data-vis facts intro: 1973 - FIRST HANDHELD PHONE AVAILABLE (OVER A FOOT LONG AND WEIGHED ALMOST 2 POUNDS - PRICED AT $3,995) (Sybase) ... IN 2009 THERE WERE 51 MILLION CARS, 210 MILLION TVS AND 1.2 BILLION PHONES SOLD AROUND THE WORLD (Sybase) 19% OF PHONES SOLD ARE NOW SMARTPHONES -THIS NUMBER IS GROWING (Sybase) IN 2010 AROUND 6.1 TRILLION SMS MESSAGES WERE SENT (ITU, UN) AND AROUND 60 MILLION IPHONES WERE SOLD (Sybase) GLOBAL MOBILE DATA TRAFFIC NEARLY TRIPLED IN 2010 FOR THE THIRD YEAR IN A ROW. (Cisco Feb 2011) There are 48 million people in the world who have mobile phones, even though they do not have electricity at home. (Cisco Feb 2011)

Mobile phones are everywhere… they’re fast becoming an extension of our personalities. Talking, texting, emailing, browsing the web, taking and sharing pictures and video, playing games, watching TV and films, listening to music, reading or writing books, tweeting, blogging, listening to the radio, navigating in a car, or on a bike, or on foot, running a business, tracking the weather, following a recipe, finding recommended restaurants close by, buying hundreds of thousands of dollars of art remotely from Sothebys... it can ALL be done on a single device that fits in a pocket.

With a present day smartphone, signal coverage and a solar charger, you could find yourself connected to the office and doing most things you would normally do at your computer - while you’re in the middle of the desert! Forget smart phones, it’s the older generation phones that really kicked off one of the fastest spreading technologies in history. They have connected far more of the world’s population than today’s smartest phones and have transformed the lives of millions of people across the developing world, who’ve never had access to a landline or the internet.

In 2010, the number of people subscribed to mobile networks surpassed 5 billion, and now over 70% of the world's population has a mobile phone. The incredible rise of social media also continues to rely on the mobile phone as an essential form of communication. All of this, combined with the rise of portable devices like tablets, means that the majority of the world’s digital experiences now occur through mobile devices.

Soon, more people will connect to the Internet on their portable devices than from their desktop computers – and it’s all happened in the space of two generations. Of all the inventions and evolutions in the short history of the digital revolution, perhaps it is mobile and portable devices that are proving to have the most impact on our lives. Accessing all of your digital needs (like the internet and social media) from the palm of your hand, no matter where you are…makes life portable.

As they continue to merge and evolve, they will also continue to influence each and every one of us, long into the future. For more information on all things mobile, check out our page at Digital Citizens.