Monday, February 28, 2005

Cellphones Welcome To The Next Level

From GlobeandMail.com Cellphones: Welcome to the next level.

The cellphone is no longer an island. Mobile technology is connecting the world with a billion invisible bonds and growing. We are now past the one billion mark of mobile users.

Welcome to the next level.

There are 1.3 billion cellphone handsets worldwide, a number expected to grow to three billion by 2008. The market for mobile data services, of which entertainment plays a significant part, is expected to grow to more than $100-billion by 2008. It's more than just talk - a cultural paradigm shift is upon us.

The cellphone has entered this elite club and the cultural impact of that is staggering. In time, like the proverbial Pacman, it may even eat the other two up, as cellphones provide ways to pay for goods and control devices over wireless networks.

We are entering the "all mobile" era.

The most innovative usage of mobile I see is using the phone as a tool to buy a concert ticket", said Ralph Simon, who founded the first North American ring tone company, Moviso in 1998 and was co-founder of Jive/Zomba Records. "You don't get a paper ticket, but get a barcode sent to your phone. You then simply take your phone to the concert event, and your phone gets read at the turnstile by a bar code reader, which in turn recognizes your ticket purchase and lets you in. This is real and is about to happen."

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