The Walt Disney Corporation has come a long way since audiences first saw Steamboat Willie in command of his river-boat vessel. These days the company behind heartwarming, animated classics is forging ahead into the mobile revolution. Piggy-backing off success of the latest release in the Toy Story franchise, the Toy Story 3 application was downloaded 1.7 million times in its first month (box-office projections foresee over $900 million in revenue for Toy Story 3, the film).
In addition to creating its own content, Disney has also moved into the mobile acquisition market with its recent purchase of Tapulous, the developing engine behind the successful iPhone series Tap Tap Revenge. With almost $1 million in monthly sales, it’s easy to understand why 30% of iPhone and iPod touch users have downloaded the musical game since its release in 2008.
With new content being developed for the iPad, it is clear that Disney intends to stay relevant as technological advances bring more media into the mobile space. The mobile future looks bright for Disney and its future generations of captivated audiences.
If you didn’t catch 60 Minutes on Sunday night, you missed an amazing segment on how mobile apps will revolutionize our lives. The show profiled Marty Cooper, grandfather of the cell phone, who at age 81 is still among the top futurists of our mobile future.
Take mobile technology and healthcare. As Cooper told Morley Safer:
“Healthcare is going to be revolutionized because you will have sensors at various points on your body measuring different things. And a computer somewhere or maybe a doctor will be examining you all the time…. If you could measure [vital signs] all the time, you could predict heart failures. You could predict diabetes. And you could prevent all these things.”
In one sense, the mobile healthcare revolution has already started. See here and here as examples. But as everyone from Marty Cooper on down would agree, mobile technology has only started to scratch the healthcare surface.
For two-minute version of the 60 Minutes show on YouTube, click here. For the complete 60 Minutes interview, click here.
WASHINGTON, D.C. - Today, the Federal Communications Commission released a National Broadband Plan, as directed by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, designed to stimulate economic growth, spur job creation, foster innovation and investment, and improve education, health care, energy efficiency, homeland security and more.
The following statement should be attributed to Jonathan Spalter, chairman of Mobile Future:
"We commend Chairman Genachowski and the broadband team at the FCC for demonstrating the vision and leadership required to tackle the challenging task of creating a National Broadband Plan. We are particularly heartened that the Commission recognizes the critical role wireless technology must play in charting a clear path forward and the need to identify additional spectrum to spur global competitiveness, innovation and sustainable high quality job creation.
We encourage the Chairman to remain steadfast in his commitment to encouraging a wireless ecosystem that holds the promise of fundamentally transforming our society and our economy. As the FCC moves toward the Plan's implementation, we urge the Chairman to continue along this bold roadmap to America's future by avoiding barriers that slow deployment, undermine investment, and stifle competition and innovation."
Earlier this year, mobile users donated more than $40 million via text messages to help Haiti's earthquake victims. Now our friends at the Mobile Giving Foundation, who spearheaded the texts-for-Haiti effort, are doing the same for the Chileans. All you need to do is text "Chile" to a five-digit number and you can make a donation of $5 or $10 to Habitat for Humanity, the Salvation Army or World Vision.
In a recent CNET article, Lance Whitney explores the exponential growth of wireless on a global level. With the ITU predicting that wireless subscriptions will reach 5 billion in 2010 (or 74 percent of the world’s population), it’s pretty clear mobile devices have become ubiquitous in today’s society. And the applications offered by mobile technology are in great demand.
This week at the Mobile World Congress, held in Barcelona, International Telecommunications Union (ITU) Secretary-General Dr. Hamadoun Toure discussed the growing role that mobile plays in providing Internet access:
"Even during an economic crisis, we have seen no drop in the demand for communications services and I am confident that we will continue to see a rapid uptake in mobile cellular services in particular in 2010, with many more people using their phones to access the Internet."
This increase in mobile connectivity can have positive implications for people around the globe.
"Even the simplest, low-end mobile phone can do so much to improve health care in the developing world," said Toure. "Good examples include sending reminder messages to patients' phones when they have a medical appointment, or need a prenatal check-up. Or using SMS messages to deliver instructions on when and how to take complex medication such as anti-retrovirals or vaccines. It's such a simple thing to do, and yet it saves millions of dollars--and can help improve and even save the lives of millions of people."
The outpouring of mobile donations in support of disaster relief in Haiti has been phenomenal and unprecedented. Immediately following the earthquake, Americans began reaching for their cell phones to make donations via text message. In the first day of a mobile call to action done solely through text messages, and made viral on networking sites like Twitter and Facebook, more than $5 million was raised for the Red Cross's relief work in Haiti.
Seven days after the earthquake hit, a record $22 million had been raised by the American Red Cross for relief efforts in Haiti, a groundbreaking statistic. Within hours after reports first emerged of the 7.0 magnitude earthquake in Haiti, all major wireless carriers agreed to utilize the mGive software application to allow users to text SMS short code 90999 and type "Haiti." A user's account would be charged $10 for the donation on their next bill and a user could text up to two times. Cell phone carriers chose not to charge users to send the texts and some carriers fronted the donations to the Red Cross to speed up delivery of money that is typically held up until a user is billed and money from customers is received.
The post-earthquake, text-to-give campaign reflects the growth trends in mobile use and texting -- not just in the younger demographic but in the over-35 group. Text messaging has grown exponentially -- with texting volume increasing 600% in just the past two years; mobile internet traffic is expected to grow 100 times faster than wireless voice traffic over the next decade; and 1 in 5 Americans already connect to the Internet daily over their mobile device. The ubiquity, power and reach of mobile phones make mobile giving a convenient and secure way to donate. In fact, cell phone campaigns may be reaching people who might not otherwise have made the effort to get involved.
This historical milestone in goodwill contribution is a hallmark of 21st century innovation and technology. For more information on how you can join the relief efforts please visit www.redcross.org
Question: What do the following have in common: a state sales tax, a local sales tax, three transportation surcharges, a 911 fee, a utilities tax, an excise tax and a franchise tax?
Answer: They're all state and local fees paid by New York's mobile phone users.
Fortunately, U.S. Rep. Anthony Weiner is among those willing to say, Enough is enough. Weiner tells the New York Daily News that Big Apple mobile users pay 10 state and city taxes and fees - more than any other city in the nation. Combined, he says, this adds about 16 percent to the mobile phone bill. Among U.S. cities, only Chicago adds on a higher amount, with a 19 percent total.
According to the
AP, high schools across Florida are embracing mobile technology as
part of the learning process. As Ariana Leonard, a Spanish teacher at a public
school near Tampa put it, students' mobile phones are such
an important part of their lives that classroom use is like "giving them another
avenue to learn outside of the
classroom."
The instruction
typically centers around text messaging and use of phone's browsers.
The reason is
pretty straightforward: Among teenagers, 71 percent have cell phones, according
to a 2008 survey by the Pew Internet & American
Life Project. Importantly, that figure remains generally
constant regardless of race, income or other demographic factors.
Back in August, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC)
approved three Notice of Inquiries (NOI) covering issues on innovation and
investment in wireless; competition in the wireless industry; and consumer
protection and access to information about communications services. Mobile
Future took the opportunity to respond to the FCC's investigations with reply
comments filed on behalf of the coalition. The reply comments focused on the recent paper
sponsored by Mobile Future, "Why the iPhone Won't Last Forever and What the
Government Should Do to Promote Its Successor." You can read Mobile Future's
comments here.
The Mercury News in Silicon Valley recently published an op-ed by Mobile Future Chairman Jonathan Spalter. The piece outlines the potential pitfalls from the FCC's recent announcement to extend net neutrality rules to the wireless world.
For the 200 million Americans who increasingly rely on their mobile phones to manage their connected lives, this subtle rule change could have a raft of unforeseen consequences, say many mobile operators and the labor unions who work with them. These could include a slowdown in investment, job cuts and worse.
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