The Mobile Society
Alberto D’Ottavi
Freelance Journalist, ICT specialist
Now blogging on http://Infoservi.it
(Past: ZDNet.it, Il Sole 24 Ore @lfa,
La Repubblica Affari & Finanza, …)
Sept-04, presentation held at the
“Seventh International Symposium on Wireless Personal
Multimedia Communications”, www.dei.unipd.it/WPMC2004

Mobile Society?
Fixed Wireless
vs.
Mobile Wireless
Mobility
vs.
“Transportability”

Wi-Fi-spot: Hot or not?
Research of School of Management,
Politecnico di Milano (Italy):
Apr-04: 800 public hot-spot
Sept-04: More than 1.000
Gartner forecast:
“Worldwide, the number of hot-spots will
triple during 2004, up to 30 millions”

Small great notebooks
Market growth 2003/2002,
unit, Italy: +33%
[Assinform]
Worldwide market growth 2004/2003,
forecast 2004: +14%, equals
187 millions unit
[Gartner]

Very smart phones
Worldwide market growth Q1 2004 / Q1 2003:
Mobile phones: +29%
Smartphones: +86%
Units, worldwide
Mobiles: 152 millions in 2003
forecast: 595 millions in 2004
Smartphones: 3,3 millions in 2003
forecast: 20 million in 2004
[IDC]

Drivers? Revolutions!
Digital Music
Peer-to-peer
Instant messaging
Blogs
Personalization
Ease of use
Standards
...

Mobile workers, Italy
Mobile workers. Italian market 2002-2007
10.000
9.500
9.000
8.500
8.000
7.500
2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007
8.580 8.661 8.904 9.188 9.518 9.884
Mobile Workers in Italia
(migliaia)
“The number of Mobile Worker is growing. More important,
the importance of their activities / applications is growing too”
[IDC]

Mobile trends
Mobile music
“Global ring-tone sales generated US$3 billion dollars
at year-end 2003, and are forecast to generate revenues in
excess of US$4.7 billion by 2008”
[InformaMedia Group]
Mobile phones market, Italy, july 2004:
“The mobile phones italian market continues to show
impressive performances. The booming of Camera and MMS
devices, helped by declining prices and the massive Tv
commercial campaigns boosted volumes over 1.6 million unit”
“Shell and Bluetooth products seem to be the natural co-actors
for multimedia devices: the two segments continue to grow,
reaching respectively 27% and 16% of July 2004 sales”
[Gfk]

Mobile attitudes
phones are no longer perceived
“Mobile
as what they used to be years ago -
communication tools. They are in fact
seen as lifestyle products now”
[Gfk]
matter what the service is, no matter
“No
what the equipment may be, they need to
have an element of fun besides being
useful, in order to be appealing to a wide
range of people”
[NTT DoCoMo]

“A trillion devices
connected…” (Scott McNealy)

Processes are changing
Derrick de Kerckhove, Head of University of
Toronto (successor of Marshall McLuhan)
“The term “Information” society, still
appropriate for the wired nineties, has
now become a tired and vacuous
concept. It still talks only about content,
while the real news is in process, not
content”

Mobilized Information
Society
Luc Soete, director of the International Institute
of Infonomics, professor for International
Economics at Maastricht University
“The Mobilized Information Society is a
society in which the ease of communication
and access to information and data is not
just an essential ingredient of economic
activity, but also of leisure”

Blogs?
Niels Bohr:
“Prediction is tough,
especially when it's
about the future…”
(Updates follows…)

2007 updates
Many of the trends discussed in 2004 actually
emerged, even if in then-unpredictable fashions
So I made a “Reloaded” version of this presentation
On my blog there are some articles (in italian) about
Mobile 2.0:
Nokia, il futuro è Internet (nov-06)
Mobile internet, prossima frontiera? (apr-07)
Nokia alla conquista del mondo. Nasce Ovi (aug-07)
Satelliti, cellulari, mobile web 2.0 e comunità (nov-07)
Still looking forward for the things to come on http://Infoservi.it