Mikolas posted very interesting comment about the future of online communities. On his view the future is mobile. I agree totally with him. But will the transfer to mobile communities happen first in North American and European markets or somewhere else? Maybe we are so stuck to the fixed line internet that it takes us much more time to adopt the new habits.
In some developing countries the mobile communication infrastructure is far more developed than the traditional fixed line. For instance there were only 50 million land lines in use in India, which has a population of 1.1 billion (2005). Number of mobile phones were about 170 million (2006). China, India, Indonesia, Bangladesh and Pakistan have population of about 3 billion people. I think that the consumers in that region will access internet through their mobile devices and they might also be the first mass market for the mobile communities.
It is quite interesting that about four out of ten mobile phones sold in that area are manufactured by Nokia. The company announced that it wants to be more than just a hardware manufacturer, when launching its Ovi service. If there is any brand loyalty within the Asian customers, there may be few hundred million Asian mobile users carrying a Nokia phone. Because of that FT.com says that the company is on Heaven’s Door.
Photo above used under CC licence, credits to juicyrai.
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