Sunday, May 6, 2007
Article:
Several countries, including the UK, now have more mobile phones than people. There will be over four hundred million cell phone users in China by 2015. Luxembourg has the highest mobile phone penetration rate in the world, at 164% in December 2001. In Hong Kong the penetration rate reached 117% of population in September 2004. The total number of mobile phone subscribers in the world was estimated at 2.14 billion in 2005.Around 80% of world's population have mobile phone coverage as of 2006. This figure is expected to increase to 90% by the year 2010.
At present, Africa has the largest growth rate of cellular subscribers in the world. African markets are expanding nearly twice as fast as Asian markets. The availability of Prepaid or pay as you go services, where the subscriber does not have to commit to a long term contract, has helped fuel this growth on a monumental scale, not only in Africa but on other continents as well.
On a numerical basis, India is the biggest growth market adding about 6 million cell phones every month. With 156.31 million cell phones, teledensity in the country is still low at 17.45% and country expects to reach 500 million subscribers by end of 2010.
All European nations and most Asian and African nations have adopted GSM. In other countries, such as the United States, Australia, India, Japan, and South Korea, legislation does not require any particular standard, and GSM coexists with other standards, such as CDMA and iDEN.
Some cellular systems are pay as you go, where top-ups can be purchased and added to a phone unit, in a wide variety of shops and even ATMs now, so there is no monthly bill. Many are "pay monthly", where a bill is issued every month for the amount of calls and text messages made.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_phone
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My thoughts:
The usage of mobile phones/ hand phones has been widespread since the period it has been introduced. This is evident as there are now almost half of the world’s population has access to mobile phone technology. The importance of instant communication has led to this “hand phone era.” Hand phone is now the second most common consumer good fond in the homes of people. Each household which is in the middle class or a higher category, has an average of 4 hand phones. 1 in 2 of the children throughout the world have a hand phone.
Though some might argue that these figures are only attributed to the usage of hand phones in rich countries, the poorer nations are actually using the hand phones much more frequently than the richer countries. This is proved by the case in India where 6 million hand phones are being bought every month. As the richer countries adapted to the hand phone technology first, they are currently first in the usage. However, the poorer nations will soon catch up with them as time passes.
The fact that, in some countries, the number of mobile phones is higher than the number of people in that country has shown the extent of the globalization in technology gadgets. Beside audio communication, mobile phones have other features such as SMS,MMS, Bluetooth, organizer, internet access and contact log. In Japan(an earthquake prone country) the SMS service us used to notify the customers of earthquakes free of charge. Thus, hand phones can be used to adapt to the situation in the country.
Despite its uses, hand phone has a side effect as well. Research has shown that the frequency of tumors in patients increase with the usage of hand phones. This means that the deterioration in health is also being globalised. Therefore during the globalisation of technology its effect, either bad or good on the environment, health, economy is also globalised.
Future Perfect; Technological Expert
4:53 PM
