How would you describe the mobile phone?

A great story from the New York Times.

Moments after he walked out of Sing Sing prison on Friday after serving 18 years for a crime that a judge ruled he did not commit, Fernando Bermudez Jr. was handed a cellphone so he could speak with one of his lawyers. It was the first time he had held one.

“It almost seemed like a little baby,” Mr. Bermudez said. “It was so delicate. I didn’t want to break it. I have to become more technologically advanced. I’m an anachronism, almost.”

Mobile coverage in the "South"

I heard a report yesterday that said six out of ten people across the world now own a mobile phone.

It is a staggering figure even though the numbers are inflated by the more affluent parts of the globe where there are more mobile phones than people.

Nevertheless think of these figures in terms of the developing world where in 10 years they have jumped from no communication to unlimited mobile communication.

What effects will that have on their society?

Over at media shift,one of its consequences is discussed in the potential and the challenges for mobile media by John West in his report,the promise of ubiquity.

more than 20 million people in the 50 least developed countries have a mobile phone but no television. He also notes that mobile phones are a classic "Bottom of the Pyramid" industry and he even goes so far as to call them "poor-centric" -- in that they work by collecting small subscription fees, that poorer subscribers can more easily afford, from a huge customer base. This makes mobiles a good way to reach an audience often shut out of the media landscape.

The potential for mobile media is great but there are also threats that come with this technology,especially in areas where democracy is not established

new technologies could enable new forms of surveillance and censorship.

Survey suggests more people want to use mobile technology to access media content

An interesting survey out of America( Ht-Paul Bradshaw).

It comes from Azuki systems and suggests that

Despite increased adoption, almost 80% of those surveyed said they wished it were easier to access information from the Internet on their mobile phones, and an equal percentage stated they wished it were easier to access rich media on their mobile phones. The majority of those surveyed pointed to a number of current obstacles to enjoying rich media on mobile. For example, 69% felt that the long time to download and/or play media ranked among their top three barriers, and 66% felt that difficulties finding and navigating to relevant content was a top three inhibitor. A number of shortcomings were also identified for iPhone and BlackBerry users.

On top of that more and more people are spending more and more time using their phones,eg

52% access the Web via their mobile phones, and 35 to 44 year-olds are leveraging this technology the most, with 60% spending time each week surfing the Web. Perhaps fueling a significant portion of this growth was iPhone adoption, which according to the survey results appeared strongest among 23 to 44 year-olds

Of course what this means if the results could be replecated over here is that media companies still have a fair amount of work to do in order to get their product to the mobile user.