Smartphones are clearly becoming a commonplace phenomenon. In the USA, smart-phones now comprise more than 20% of all cellular phones, and this number is expected to rise to more than 40% in a few years.
What’s most interesting about smartphones is that, unlike feature phones, smartphones can have a useful second life.
Imagine meeting someone new or a friend a colleague after a long time and you decide to exchange phone numbers with that person. Exchanging a phone number the usual way would mean asking the other person for his/her contact information, typing in his/her name and phone number, storing it in the phone’s address book, calling the other person, and then having the person type in your name and storing your information.
Last month Skype announced an agreement with Digium, the primary developer of the asterisk open-source IP-PBX software, to enable Skype from Asterisk. What this means is that one could make skype calls, even long distance and International telephone calls, from your office office phone as well as receive skype calls on your office phone. The initial versions will only support voice, with video support to be supported in the future.
A Boston-based company called MobileSphere has just announced a service called Slydial to send a voicemail to any mobile phone in the U.S. without having the risk of the called party answering the call. Anyone can send a voicemail by calling 267-SLYDIAL (267-759-3425) and entering the phone number of any U.S. mobile subscriber. The service is free, but you have to listen to a 10-second audio advertisement.
What MobileSphere has done is to figure out a way to connect you directly with different U.S. cell phone providers voicemail systems.
Continue reading ‘When its awkward to talk to someone……just leave a voicemail’ »
Harris Interactive, a market research firm, has conducted a survey of 9,132 adults conducted in 4Q of 2007 to find out the telephony usage patterns of U.S. adults. The survey shows that about 14% of adults are cord-cutters, up from about 10% in 2006. The percentage of adults with landline phones has dropped slightly to 79% from 81%. This shows that the number of people who use a cell phone exclusively for voice communication (i.e. have no landline phone), also called cord-cutters, is increasing.
The Chart and the table below show the telephony usage patterns among U.S. adults
Continue reading ‘Telephony Usage among U.S. Adults shows Cord-cutting continuing’ »
On 3/31, I noticed this new “New! Gmail Custom Time” notice on Gmail. Curious to know what it was, I clicked on it but the link didn’t work at that time. I was surprised that a Google link was not working, but didn’t take much notice beyond that.
Turns out this was an April Fool’s joke (The link started working on 4/1). I didn’t fall for it, because I heard about the joke before I got to the link on 4/1 (shown below), but I didn’t realize the joke on 3/31 either.
Continue reading ‘Will “Gmail Custom Time” become reality!’ »
Ericsson Chief Marketing Officer Johan Bergendahl is predicting that as Mobile Broadband takes off (and it is growing faster than mobile or fixed telephony ever did), Wi-Fi hotspots will become as obsolete as telephone booths. The reasoning is simple – As more and more cellular subscribers start using wireless broadband otherwise known as Wireless WAN (WWAN) technologies (e.g CDMA2000 EV-DO, HSPA/HSDPA/HSUPA, WiMAX, LTE) and it becomes available in many areas, WiFi hot spots will no longer be needed. In fact, Bergendahl says that “Hotspots at places like Starbucks are becoming the telephone boxes of the broadband era”.
T-Mobile USA has launched a wired phone service for $10 a month, plus taxes and fees, to its wireless subscribers in the Seattle and Dallas-Fort Worth areas. The service, called “Talk Forever Home Phone”, comes with unlimited local and domestic long distance calls. This is a VoIP service that runs over a broadband connection, and in that sense, it is similar to VoIP offerings from the likes of Vonage. Talk Forever Home Phone will likely be available nationally in a few months. It works via a special Wi-Fi wireless router that you must buy, with a two-year contract, for a $50 one-time fee . The router has two phone jacks to connect 2 standard corded or cordless phones.
Continue reading ‘Vonage watch out! T-Mobile Extends Cellphone Service to Home Phones’ »
Verizon Wireless introduced an unlimited calling plan for $99.99 a month on last week. Verizon Wireless is the first major carrier to make an “unlimited” plan available nationwide with no domestic roaming or long-distance fees. At that time, it must have seemed like a good plan to upsell subscribers to “move up” to the unlimited level, including possibly getting new customers from the other cellular carriers, and to create some extra ‘buzz’.
The cellular market in India is growing rapidly. In 2007 alone the Indian cellular added more than 80 million cellular subscriptions. By end of 2008, India will have more than 300 million cellular customers, according to estimates by Wireless Intelligence. In comparison, the USA is expected to have 270 million customers by the end of 2008. At this level,
Continue reading ‘India to become the 2nd largest cellular market in 2008’ »
