Mobile education projects haven't replaced face-to-face teaching, but they can be a valuable addition to lessons. The Mobile Learning Toolkit, written by Jenni Parker and developed for my.coop (an organization that teaches agricultural cooperative management techniques to people in Africa, Asia, and Latin America), is an adaptable work that outlines techniques for using mobile technology in educational training systems.
The Mobile Learning Toolkit is broken down into four sections, focusing on Delivering Content, Gathering Feedback, Assigning Tasks, and Providing Support. Although the toolkit was designed for agricultural training sessions, it is open source and can be adapted to other areas that would benefit from using mobile technology to connect with beneficiaries before, during, and after on-location training sessions.
An important point reiterated throughout the toolkit is the importance of face-to-face trainings, and how mobile technology is not a replacement for face-to-face education, but rather an enhancement to it. Many of the SMS, voice, and photo-based modules ask participants to report on and gather data from their daily experiences before attending face-to-face sessions, and the trainings are built around content that comes directly from participants. Making the m-learning sessions more about learning and less about mobile helps training leaders understand what participants want and need, and shifts the focus back to locally relevant education.
February may be the shortest month, but there's no shortage of upcoming mobile events. Read on to find out what's happening this month in the mobile world, and please add in your own events in the comments!
7-9 February, BlackBerry DevCon Europe (Amsterdam, Netherlands) If you're curious about what's involved in developing for the BlackBerry market, check out the BlackBerry DevCon. The event features demonstrations, hands-on labs, and discussion panels to show attendees how to build for the BlackBerry platform.
9 February, Mobile Disconnect (Washington, D.C., USA) Mobile Disconnect examines the hype around mobile technology and its role in combatting global poverty and social issues. The panel will discuss the potential and limitations of mobile technology for social change and development.
10 February, mEducation Alliance Seminar (Washington, D.C., USA) USAID and the mEducation Alliance are hosting another event in their seminar series. This month's seminar features a discussion with One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) on the new XO 3 tablet and learning. You can register to attend virtually by RSVPing to mobilesforeducation@gmail.com
Natural disasters and humanitarian crises can damage infrastructure, redistribute populations, and make it difficult for relief organizations to do their work; in these situations, mobile communications can be the best way to organize disaster relief efforts and provide early warning systems.
The GSMA has released finalists for the Global Mobile Awards (Editor's Disclosure: MobileActive's Katrin Verclas is a judge for the awards in the category focused on mobile programs for "Underserved Communities.")
(Editor's Notes: The following is a guest post by Keshet Bachan, a gender equality activist and manager of the Because I Am A Girl report. The article originally appeared on Linda Raftree's ICT4D blog. It is reposted here with permission.)
Can mobile ‘apps’ really prevent or discourage instances of violence against women? This question has been on my mind since a colleague shared this video from Voice of America about a mobile app called ‘Fight Back’, marketed as ‘India’s first mobile app for women’s safety’.
The video sparked an email discussion that raised some interesting questions that deserve a closer examination.
The VOA story provides a holistic view of violence against women and the developers of the mobile phone application admit that they are but one element in a broader system that needs to respond to instances of violence. They discuss the involvement of police and other duty bearers, such as municipal bodies, which need to address reports women make and do more to reduce their risks. I applaud this approach and the way in which the developers acknowledge the limitations of their application, which I find refreshing.
At the same time I feel this application distracts attention away from more prevalent (and deadly) issues. According to the World Health Organization 10-69% of women stated that they had been physically assaulted by an intimate partner at some point in their lives. The WHO also reports that 40-70% of female murder victims were killed by an intimate partner. A recent survey in the UK showed that one in three girls aged 13 – 17 reported sexual abuse from a partner and one in four had experienced some form of physical partner violence. The UK police receive a call for help regarding relationship abuse every minute.
The degree to which this mobile phone application promotes the notion of ‘stranger danger’ distracts attention from the urgent and more prevalent issue of family and intimate partner violence. Moreover, the fact that the application has a GPS tracker to trace a woman’s route home could inadvertently contribute to both increasing women’s fear of violence in public spaces as well as playing into the hands of those who seek to control women’s mobility by pleading the need to ‘protect’ them by knowing their whereabouts at all times.
In this context a colleague commented that a GPS enabled function could allow ‘even a moderately tech-savvy user to trace the woman in question’ – which could serve to increase traditional control over women who dare to step outside the confines of convention (and the home) even further.
Many mobile and tech for development projects elicit enthusiastic responses by the target constituency when they are asked, but then go on to not be used."Yours is Better!" Participant Bias in HCI investigates the influence of researchers and developers on how beneficiaries react to new services and products, specifically the social and behavioral reasons why users may claim to like a project or find it useful. In an effort to understand the relationship between interviewers and interviewees, two researchers ran an experiment to test the effects of participant bias. Covering interviewers with 450 residents of Bangalore, India, the experiment tested three hypotheses:
A simple text message can have a big impact. Mobile giving makes it easy to donate almost instantaneously after disaster strikes -- users authorize a mobile donation by texting a keyword to a specific short code, and the donation is then billed to the donor's mobile phone bill, eventually ending up with the nonprofit of choice.
Following the devastating Haitian earthquake of 2010 that left more than 200,000 people dead and more than 1 million Haitians homeless, mobile donations to Haiti totaled more than $43 million -- the first time mobile giving went mainstream in the United States on a large scale.
On the two-year anniversary of the Haitian earthquake, the Pew Internet Project has released "Real Time Charitable Giving," a report that delves into mobile giving and donors' motivations in the U.S.
The report, a collaboration among the Pew Internet Project, the Berkman Center for Internet and Society, the Knight Foundation, and the mGive Foundation, aims to provide a window into the motivations, benefits, and potential pitfalls of mobile giving campaigns.
Drawn from a sample of 863 individuals who made a mobile donation to the "Text for Haiti" campaign, the survey covers why the users gave, how they learned about the mobile donation campaign, how likely they were to share information about their mobile donation, and how likely they were to remain engaged with relief efforts.
Where can a pregnant woman find low-cost prenatal care in her area? How should she position a car seatbelt to best protect herself and her baby? Should she get a flu shot? During pregnancy, expectant mothers can have lots of questions; Text4Baby seeks to keep pregnant women informed about pregnancy issues through regular SMS updates sent to their mobile phones.
About 24 million messages have been sent on a variety of subjects like labor and delivery, nutrition, immunizations, mental health, developmental milestones, family violence, physical activity, and breastfeeding. Messages are timed based on delivery dates, and are available in both English and Spanish by texting either "baby" (for English) or "bebe" (for Spanish) to the US shortcode 511411.
What makes a mobile health project successfuly grow? What causes so many m-health projects to wither or fail? And what can practitioners learn from existing m-health projects to build growth into programs for the future? "Scaling Up Mobile Health: Elements Necessary for the Successful Scale Up of mHealth in Developing Countries" examines these questions by looking at nine case studies on successful mobile health projects and pulling out the key strategies that led to successful growth.
The case studies cover a wide array of health issues, including maternal and early childhood health (ChildCount+, Pesinet, Project Mwana, Tele Salud), medication stocking and verification (mPedigree, SMS for Life), disease outbreak monitoring (mTRAC), and HIV/AIDS awareness (SMS for Health, Txt Alert); the report details how the projects deal with issues like local buy-in, scale, and sustainability. "Scaling Up Mobile Health" is broken up into three sections: case studies, best practices, and recommendations for future m-health projects.
The main lessons from the report focus on what has worked within the highlighted case studies and what is needed for future m-health projects to be successful. Below is a summary of the key points and takeaways from the report:
Welcome to a very mobile 2012! Last year mobiles were at the forefront of protests, citizen journalism, disaster recovery and relief, environmental issues, and more – and brought up questions of security and privacy along the way. Check out our new page dedicated to MobileActive's 2011; the Year in Review pulls together our best content from the year in one easy location.
From the launch of The Mobile Media Toolkit (a great resource for reporters, citizen journalists, and media organizations that want to use mobile technology in their work) and our increased focus on security and privacy with the SaferMobile initiative, we've set the groundwork for big changes in 2012.
Keep in contact with MobileActive through Twitter, Facebook, our discuss list, or our newsletters at MobileActive.org and (for all of you reporters and citizen journalists) at the Mobile Media Toolkit. We hope that everyone has a safe and happy New Year, and we are excited for what 2012 holds. Thanks for being part of the MobileActive community!
Mali has one of the highest infant mortality rates in the world. There are roughly 111 deaths for every 1000 live births in the country and the under-5 mortality rate is 191 out of every 1000 children. The need for early detection of diseases and stronger local health structures led to the creation of Pesinet, a non-profit that uses mobile technology to provide regular health checkups and affordable health insurance for young children in Mali's capital, Bamako.
Roughly 600 children are currently enrolled in the program in the neighborhood of Bamako Coura, under the care of four Pesinet agents (each covering around 150 children). Pesinet combines both early warning systems and insurance. Families pay 500 CF a month for each enrolled child; the payments cover doctor examinations and half the cost of any medications the child needs if he or she gets sick.
Enrolled children are tested weekly for symptoms of illness such as fever, cough, diarrhea, low weight, or vomiting by community health workers who enter data from each visit into a custom-designed Java application on their phone. The data is sent via GPRS to an online database. Doctors at local community health centers monitor the patient data for sudden changes in health. If changes occur, the community health workers receive an alert on their phones and then go back, in turn, to alert the family that the doctor needs to give the child a checkup.
FailFaire – where it's okay to admit the mistakes. MobileActive hosted another round of FailFaire, bringing together practitioners, developers, donors, and students involved in the use of technology for social change development to discuss what's usually swept under the rug – project failure. The event is an open space to discuss those projects that went wrong in our field fostering a sense of learning from mistakes and knowledge sharing. The latest FailFaire in New York brought together eight practitioners to present their failed projects and what they learned along the way. Take a look at this FastCompany article about the NYC FailFaire for some background.
We recently attended the mHealth Summit 2011 to learn more about the latest developments in the mobile health field. The conference brought together developers, practitioners, NGOs, representatives from corporate industries, and government officials to discuss the current state and future of mobile health.
Several key trends emerged among the discussions, focusing on: local buy-in and capacity building, the importance of building partnerships and trust among communities, and the need to transition from short-term pilots to scalable, sustainable mHealth projects.
Scale, Sustainability, and Hype
There was a lot of discussion at the mHealth Summit 2011 about the number of failed pilot projects and the hype around mobile health. More productively, there was considerable discussion on what steps can be taken to reduce the waste (including financial, time, and community good-will) that results from launching unusable, unscalable, or unsustainable mobile health projects. The honest assessment of challenges in the m-health field led to discussions about scalability and sustainability.
On November 8, 2011, the Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf won her re-election campaign following a contentious runoff vote. In the October 11 general election, neither of the top two presidential candidates secured a majority vote –Johnson Sirleaf received 43.9% of votes and opposition candidate Winston Tubman received 32.7% of the nation’s votes. Johnson Sirleaf and Tubman were scheduled to participate in a November 8 runoff election; however, Tubman boycotted it saying that the first elections had been unfair; a claim international election observers dispute. As the only candidate, Sirleaf won the runoff despite a low 37.4% of eligible voters coming out for the second round (compared to more than 70% for the first round).
In light of the election’s tumult, MobileActive.org spoke to the National Democratic Institute and Ushahidi Liberia to learn more about their respective work in the country encouraging transparency and fairness through election monitoring and citizen reporting.
The National Democratic Institute and Ushahidi in the 2011 Liberian Elections
Elections can be rigged in many ways, and voter fraud is varied. For instance, ballots can be changed or manipulated, voters can be influenced through intimidation or bribes, violence can shut down polling stations, or ballots can be changed after the election before the results are announced. Technical difficulties can also influence an election by preventing voters from casting their votes or having those votes accurately counted; difficulties could include long lines, failure to open a polling place on time, or a lack of necessary supplies.
It may be the end of the year, but that doesn't mean mobile events are slowing down! With conferences, calls for research, developer meet-ups, and networking opportunities, you won't get bored this December. Check out what's happening with mobiles this month:
5 December, Mobile Monday Las Vegas(Las Vegas, USA) The inaugural Las Vegas Mobile Monday meeting will feature presentations of mobile applications, product demonstrations, and discussions about social media outreach and investing.
5-7 December, mHealth Summit (Washington, D.C., USA) The third year of the mHealth Summit looks at how multiple sectors (including governments, NGOs, the telecommunications industry, and academia) can work together to create mobile health projects that improve health systems around the world. We'll be reporting from there.
5-7 December, Advances in Mobile Computing & Multimedia (MoMM-2011) (Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam) This research-based conference, now in its ninth year, brings together researchers and industry practitioners to discuss the mobile computing and multimedia industry.
6 December, The Guardian Mobile Business Summit 2011 (London, UK) This event focuses on the business side of mobile use – branding, user engagement, content creation and delivery, and mobile advertising. The event also has a large focus on networking for attendees.
6-9 December, MobiQuitous 2011 (Copenhagen, Denmark) For researchers and practitioners in the mobile and computing worlds, MobiQuitous offers a chance to share research and learn from workshops and discussions.
How can you share information across rural areas with limited or non-existent Internet connections? This is the question that Awaaz.De, an India-based organization that uses interactive-voice-response (IVR) systems to share information on mobile phones, is working to answer.
Co-created by Neil Patel and Tapan Parikh, both at the University of California at Berkeley, Awaaz.De is used by organizations to share information with voice as the primary channel. This could, for instance, take the form of a question and answer service, voice discussion forums, voice surveys, and automated calls.
Because of the open-ended structure of the Awaaz.De platform, the platform has been adapted by very different organizations. Labor Voices uses Awaaz.De to allow migrant workers to review jobs and employers in a voice database; the Development Support Centre uses the service to provide information to small-scale farmers as part of the Avaaj Otalo project (covered by MobileActive.org here), and Galli Galli Sim Sim (the Indian version of Sesame Street) uses the service to allow pre-school teachers to share teaching experiences and information about educational activities.
According to Patel in a post on the ICT 4 Community Health Worker discussion list, there are now eight organizations using Awaaz.De. These organizations have, together, produced more than 100,000 calls from about 10,000 unique callers.
Again, there are plenty of upcoming mobile and tech conferences. Check out our listings for November 2011 below, and feel free to let us know about any other upcoming events on Facebook or Twitter.
1-2 November: AppsWorld (New York City, USA) AppsWorld is a two-track event; one for marketers and one for developers. The app developer track focuses on bringing together developers and entrepreneurs to learn about creating, distributing, and monetizing apps. The marketing track looks at how apps can be used by businesses as part of a marketing strategy.
2-4 November: Open Mobile Summit (San Francisco, USA) The Open Mobile Summit is focused on how mobile, Internet, and media technologies can be used in business. The year's event will look at a variety of subjects including mobile money, the use of video technologies, mobile evolution, and more.
6-9 November: AnDevCon (San Francisco, USA) Love Android? Then check out the Android developer conference, where you can meet up with other developers to take technical classes and workshop projects.
9-10 November: 14th Annual Africa Com (Cape Town, South Africa) This year's conference focuses on "advancing innovation and profitability for a digital Africa." The event will look at a wide variety of digital projects, from m-health, to rural telecoms, to mobile money, to operator strategies.
Making health initiatives more accessible through technology can help patients and doctors keep themselves better informed about health and wellness. On October 25th, The Path of the Blue Eye hosted unNiched: Scratch, Sniff and Learn, a short conference focusing on innovation in the health marketing and communications world. Fard Johnmar, one of the founders of the Path of the Blue Eye project, introduced all the speakers and explained that the event is about " really getting people together from different disciplines, so that they can learn from each other and improve health and wellness."
Seven organizations gave short presentations on their health and technology initiatives before the group broke out into smaller discussions and demonstrations. Three of the projects presented at unNiched with a mobile focus: MoTeCh, a program using mobile phones to connect community health workers and beneficiaries in Uganda; Ubiqi, a mobile tracking tool for patients with chronic disease; and InStrat, a personalized SMS health alert system. While introducing the mobile technology section of unNiched Johnmar said, "So mobile – you'll see in today's presentations and by interacting with our innovators – really means empowerment, education and finally, most important for me, behavior change." Watch a short video featuring excerpts from the mobile UnNiched presentations below to see how the organizations are using mobile in their work, and read on for a description of each project.
Today's Mobile Minute brings you coverage on India's mobile growth, smartphones in Asia, the relationship between social media and mobile phones in America, Nokia's global sales report, and the rise of open data projects in the United Kingdom.
Reuters reports that mobile subscriptions in India are on the rise; in August alone mobile phone operators added 7.34 million new subscribers, bringing the country's total number of mobile subscriptions to 865.71 million. However, now that roughly 70% of the country's population has a mobile phone, the number of new subscribers is rising more slowly than last year as the market becomes more saturated.
The mobile and smartphone market in the Asia-Pacific region is growing rapidly, and Cellular News has the breakdown of current and projected sales: "The smartphone market is [...] expected to have healthy growth, with 24% share in total handset shipments in 2011, up from 17% in 2010. Smartphone shipments in Asia will see a significant growth of 56% in 2011, which indicates the growing demand for smartphones in emerging Asian markets. Smartphone shipments in Asian markets will see a boost for Android-based smartphones, with market share increasing to 52% in 2011, up from 16% in 2010. As a result, the combined market share of Samsung and HTC, the leading Android-based smartphone makers in Asia, will swell from 11% in 2010 to 24% in 2011."
Following this weekend's Tunisian elections, the world is looking to the Middle East to see how new democracies are born. But in many countries with emerging democracies, fraud and corruption can taint the credibility of elections, and the public's trust in the fairness and validity of election results. We have long argued that technology - mobile technology in particular - can play a key role in helping to ensure fair and accurate voting processes and results. However, data has been missing to make that point more definitively.
In areas where much of the voting process isn't digitized, using technology can help mitigate vote tampering and incorrect results. Additionally, SMS reports of vote tabulation from polling stations by trained election observers can be an effective way of limiting voting fraud and corruption, and has been used in different elections around the world. In Lebanon's 2009 elections, roughly 2500 volunteer citizen observers reported from a statistically significant number of polling station incidence reports throughout election day. In Nigeria, 2011 Project Swift Count deployed 8000 trained election observers across the country to report on the elections, including election results from polling stations directly, using SMS.
Today's Mobile Minute brings you news about the decline of knock-off phones in China, mobile phone statistics in South Africa, the case for password protecting your mobile phone, challenges to mHealth projects in Africa, and new global mobile statistics.
A new article from the L.A. Times looks at the fall in popularity of shanzhai (knock-off) phones in China, as shanzhai phones now represent only 7% of the Chinese market, down from 20% in 2007. The article says that the trend for buying brand-name phones is due to the greater availability of low-cost smartphones, and a preference for high-end features in smartphones that the knock-offs can not replicate.
Nielsen Wire recently released a study on mobile use in South Africa, examining everything from network loyalty and social mobile use (such as downloading ringtones, wallpapers, and screensavers), to comparisons between mobile contracts and pre-paid phones and the use of SMS and mobile instant messaging services.
Do you password protect your phone? Read Write Web reports that more than half of smartphone owners surveyed by Confident Technologies do not lock and password protect their phones. If your phone is stolen, lost, or confiscated then all of your personal data (including contacts in the address book, emails saved in your inbox, and log-ins for social media sites like Twitter and Facebook) stored on your phone could be compromised; using a password makes this information harder to access.
PBS examines the hype around mHealth projects in the developing world, and whether mobile technologies are successful at managing health issues. The article looks at challenges to mHealth projects such as limited mobile access for beneficiaries, spotty network coverage, the high costs of large-scale projects, and the difficulty of maintaining charged phones.
A new month brings new events, so check out everything that's happening in mobile-for-development land this October!
4-7 OctoberSTAR-TIDES Technology Demo (Washington, D.C., USA) This free Tech@State event "showcases innovative, low-cost, sustainable technologies for stressed populations, post-war, post-disaster, and impoverished [communities]." Visitors can interact with the technology and there will be live demonstrations throughout the event.
4-7 OctoberPlanet of the Apps Europe (London, UK) If you're looking for an event that focuses on the business side of mobile development, Planet of the Apps highlights mobile strategies and opportunities for developers, manufacturers, operators, and marketers.
6-7 OctoberDroidCon UK (London, UK) Love Android? The latest DroidCon is a two-day event for Android developers; the first day features a community-led Barcamp and a democamp where developers can showcase their work and lead discussions, while the second day features presentations from top Android developers.
14-16 OctoberData Without Borders (New York City, USA) Do you have data you want analyzed? Data Without Borders is hosting a kickoff "datadive," a weekend of bringing together NGOs with data experts for free consultations and data analyzations.
18-20 OctoberRIM DevCon Americans (San Francisco, USA) Want to learn how to develop for the BlackBerry platform? The two-day DevCon Americas is a "showcase for the latest innovations and breakthroughs with the BlackBerry Development Platform. Thousands of BlackBerry enthusiasts come together for sessions, demonstrations, hands-on labs and keynotes — all focused on creating mobile applications for the powerful BlackBerry platform."
27-28 OctoberTech4Africa (Johannesburg, South Africa) Tech4Africa looks at mobile, web, and emerging technology in Africa. The event has panel discussions, workshops, and Ignite pitches examining trends in technology and information, specifically for the African market.
Today's Mobile Minute brings you coverage on the future of QR codes in the upcoming U.S. elections, a GSMA study on the effects of cutting mobile taxes in Africa, a look at how Americans prefer to use their mobile phones, the growth of mobile money transfers in Uganda and the world, and a roundup of whom to follow on Twitter for ICT4D and M4D news.
Mashable investigates how QR codes could be used in the upcoming 2012 U.S. elections. Ideas include organizing field operations, soliciting donations, encouraging celebrity endorsements, cross-promoting the election through merchandise sales and social media, and using QR codes to reach out to new voting blocks during get out the vote drives.
The GSMA recently released their preliminary findings from research on mobile phone taxation in Africa. The research is still ongoing, and will have a global focus when the final results are released, but the information from Africa shows how lower taxes on handsets can lead to an increase in mobile ownership – in Kenya, after the value added tax on handsets was cut by 16%, sales increased by 200%.
CNN reports that the popularity of SMSs as the primary means of mobile communication in the United States is rising, while voice call preference is dropping. From a study from the Pew Internet and American Life Project, 53% of Americans still prefer voice calls to SMS, while 31% prefer SMS to calls, and 14% said their preference was flexible depending on the situation. The study also found that 27% of mobile owners never use SMS, so voice is still the leading way to communicate via mobile in the US despite the growing popularity of SMS (only 4% of survey respondents said they only use their phones for SMS and never voice calls).
In Uganda, mobile payments and mobile money transfers are taking off. According to Business Week, Ugandan telecom MTN reported that they passed more than $200 million in mobile money in August 2011. In related news, The Times of India reported on a new projection from the Ernst & Young consultant firm that estimates that by 2014, roughly $245 billion will be transfered via mobile payments systems worldwide.
Interested in global development and want to learn more through Twitter? The Guardian has a roundup of twenty Twitter users who tweet about global development, ICT4D, M4D, global change, and good aid practices. If you're looking to follow some new people on Twitter, this is a good start.
[Mobile Minute Disclaimer: The Mobile Minute is a quick round-up of interesting stories that have come across our RSS and Twitter feeds to keep you informed of the rapid pace of innovation. Read them and enjoy them, but know that we have not deeply investigated these news items. For more in-depth information about the ever-growing field of mobile tech for social change, check out our blog posts, white papers and research, how-tos, and case studies.]
ICT4D and M4D projects often focus on how mobiles can be used in developing countries, but the success and usefulness of these projects depends on the value mobile users place on their phones, and how they use them. "We Use It Different, Different: Making Sense of Trends in Mobile Use in Ghana," looks at how Ghanians use mobile phones in their day-to-day lives, mainly focusing on why survey participants started using a mobile phone, how they use it, and how they view the value of mobile phone ownership.
The Ugandan Ministry of Health has launched an initiative to digitize the country’s health management systems. Because mobile technology can be the fastest, cheapest means of collecting and analyzing data, especially in rural areas, the Minstry is embracing mobile technology to create a seamless system of health management and early warning techniques across the country. The Ugandan UNICEF country office has developed projects to work with the Ministry’s goal of digitizing the health systems. mTrac and Community Vulnerability Surveillance are two new projects that use SMS to gather and disseminate data and news, with a focus on health and public services.
Today's Mobile Minute brings you coverage on a new mobile frequency breakthrough, comparisons between mobile devices and PCs, the results of a mobile-based South African youth sex survey, the growth of apps in the Asia-Pacific region, and a look at the future of the global mobile payment industry.
Researchers at Rice University have developed a new technology that allows mobile devices to use the same frequency to both talk and listen to cell towers. Normally, two frequencies are needed to transmit and receive wireless data; the new technology could allow operators to double the capacity of their towers.
A new study from the International Data Corporation predicts that mobile Internet users will outnumber PC Internet users by 2015. Read Write Web reports that although smartphones are a big part of the shift, the release of tablet devices like the iPad give the predictions of mobile-dominance more credence.
The Praekelt Foundation recently released the results of its "Youth Sex Survey," which received more than 130,000 responses via the mobile platform Young Africa Live. The survey asked users of the social portal questions about their sexual health and opinions about sex and relationships; AudienceScapes reports on some of the responses: "Findings included a high percentage (44 percent) of South African youth admitting they are sexually active at the same time that they are significantly concerned about HIV/AIDS – 81 percent of respondents indicated they equate 'not telling a sexual partner that you carry the virus' with outright murder." (Read more about the Praekelt Foundation and Young Africa Live here.)
Mobile applications are huge in the Asia-Pacific region; a study by the analyst firm Ovum estimates that "total number of mobile apps downloaded could reach 14 billion in 2016." TechCircle reports that the region already anticipates 5 billion app downloads for 2011, and that estimated revenue from paid mobile applications could reach $871 this year.
If you like charts, check out this graphic depicting a prediction of the global mobile payments market (based off data from Juniper Research) by the year 2015. Divided into eight worldwide regions, the graph (and research) shows how the world will use mobile payments (including near field communications, mobile payments/transfers, and regular purchase of goods).
[Mobile Minute Disclaimer: The Mobile Minute is a quick round-up of interesting stories that have come across our RSS and Twitter feeds to keep you informed of the rapid pace of innovation. Read them and enjoy them, but know that we have not deeply investigated these news items. For more in-depth information about the ever-growing field of mobile tech for social change, check out our blog posts, white papers and research, how-tos, and case studies.]
