Will cellular revolution change our living?
Special to Times of Oman
Just before starting her car, Jhelam took a cursory look at her mobile screen. What was the local news? Would there be morning drizzle? Would the morning traffic be heavy in the normal route or would she have to make a detour?
Many a news channels in India and elsewhere now run dedicated news clippings meant for mobile platforms. So what’s the big deal if drivers looks at their mobile screen to check the news?
Nothing is new apart from the fact that these would be local cable channels on mobile solely meant for the local residents. Like localised apps made popular by iPhone and Android Operating System (OS), these cable channels on mobile could render immense benefits to local residents in the spheres of rendering local information on traffic, weather, road conditions, local incidents etc. And it would score over local FM radio station owing to its video factor.
Industry pundits argue, as cable TV operators do run their own local channels, they would not face much infrastructural problem of launching them on mobile platform. Barring from getting nods from the concerned regulatory authority, the process should not confront any major hiccups. Financial analysts point out that the domain of mobile information channels could be a cluster of small towns or a big city to make it financially viable.
And cellular service providers would also be interested as this kind of service would enhance the data use of the mobile user.
Meanwhile the cellular industry is undergoing a rapid transformation globally both on technological as well usage front. According to International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the global apex body on telecommunication, there could be 6.8 billion cellular subscribers globally out of 7.14 billion world population.
And this gigantic cellular world is fast leaving the domain of voice and text to the additional domain of audio, video and live streaming for sake of revenue.
Technological transformation could be comprehended best if one would look at the picture of rapidly changing scenario of supply of cellular handsets to the world market.
Global cellular industry statistics would show that whereas the shipment of basic phones, feature phones and smartphones stood at 122 million, 770.8 million and 694.8 million units respectively in 2012, it would be 58, 660.9 and 1342.5 million units respectively in 2016. In other words, smartphone emerges as the clear winner in global handset market with a projected over 51 per cent share by 2016.
Riding the smartphone bandwagon, new entrants like WhatsApp, Viber, BBM, Skype now are posing serious challenges to traditional short message service or SMS. Breaking the national boundaries imposed by SMS one can connect globally through whatsapp, viber, BBM, Skype.
Though with traffic of 6.1 trillion messages and $114.6 billion in revenue (2010 figure), SMS is still sitting pretty at the top, services like whatsapp (10 billion daily message in November 2013), Viber (200 million users), Skype (663 million users) or BBM (70 million users) are posing a serious threat. The author is a freelance writer with a penchant for technology. All the views and opinions expressed in the article are solely those of the author and do not reflect those of Times of Oman.