Worldwide mobile penetration reaches 100% for the first time – Ericsson

Numbers released by Ericsson claim the number of worldwide mobile subscriptions has surpassed global population for the first time.

The pre-Mobile World Congress special edition of the Ericsson Mobility Report unveiled current mobile network usage statistics while forecasting likely numbers five years from now. Q4 2015, the sampled period of the report, would appear to be a significant one for the mobile industry with a couple of milestones passed, according to Ericsson

Firstly, the report claims 68 million global mobile subscriptions were added in the quarter, with India leading the way in terms of growth with 21 million new subscribers. China, the US and Myanmar followed with 6m additions for the former and 5m for the latter two respectively. Meanwhile, the number of LTE subscriptions worldwide topped a billion for the first time, with 160 million additions in Q4. The report also claimed mobile penetration has now reached 100% for the first time, with 7.3 billion mobile subscribers worldwide.

Read the full post

5 Brilliant Ways in Which NRIs Are Helping People in Rural India with Just a Few Phone Calls!

This article on using mobile technology for social good is part of the #Mobile4Good series & is made possible by Vodafone India.

Who says you cannot serve your country from far away? A group of NRIs is using technology to help people in rural India very effectively. From water scarcity to lack of electricity – they are busy solving these problems from thousands of miles away.

‘One phone call a day to keep problems away’ is the basic mantra with which Suresh Ediga, an NRI living in New York, has been working for people in rural India.

It was four years ago that Suresh came to know about CGNet Swara, a voice-based news portal, operational in Adivasi areas of states like Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Odisha, Telangana, Rajasthan, and Gujarat. CGNet Swara is basically a platform where people can report or listen to news on local issues by dialling a number. All the recorded messages are translated into Hindi and English and published on the website, where journalists, NGOs and other organisations can listen to them and help resolve the problems.

Immediately after going through the website some years ago, Suresh decided to help. He would take one issue every week, call up the concerned authorities in India, and would keep calling until some action was taken. After a few years of doing this, he decided to get more people on board so the impact could be larger.

Today, he leads a group of 12 NRIs who meet online once every week, discuss and decide which issues they will take up, and make all the necessary calls.

Read the post

Bridging the language divide

Tablets and smartphones have revolutionised the way in which we all work, and changed expectations of how everyone should be able to work. Modern workers need to communicate and share information, from any location, and from any mobile platform. Making potentially sensitive analytical and other scientific data available to the right personnel, in real time and in a suitable format, is no different, conceptually, at least. Yet in an R&D or life-science testing environment, data is likely to comprise multiple layers of information, coming out of multiple instruments from multiple vendors, which may all use different native software.

Interpreting data formats

BSSN Software recently launched its Seahorse Mobile Edition platform as a vendor-independent solution for delivering scientific data to mobile devices, supporting a wide range of analytical data types, from HPLC and mass spectrometry, to medical imaging, microplate readers and bioreactors. The platform effectively sits alongside the data source – for example, a scientific data management system (SDMS), which provides an interface with existing data repositories, and interprets the data format. ‘In today’s world of mobile working, it is really important for people to be able to access their analytical data wherever they are, perhaps to see what analytical results have been generated overnight, while they are on the train to work in the morning’, commented Burkhard Schaefer, BSSN president and lead architect of the AnIML data standard on which BSSN’s Seahorse family of software is built. ‘Users may want to flick through data from previous experiments to help decide on their next round of analyses, and they may not necessarily be in the laboratory or at a workstation when they need to be able to do this.’

Read the post

8 Economic Barriers Responsible for India’s Gender Digital Divide

The mobile phone is one of the most widely used information and communication technologies in the developing world. For instance, in India, as of December 2013, there were more than 900 million mobile phone subscribers (Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, 2014). However, in the male-dominated Indian society with 940 females per 1,000 males, only 30% of mobile phone owners were female, which indicates the presence of a gender digital divide in the country.

In Inequalities creating economic barriers to owning mobile phones in India Factors responsible for the gender digital divide, Devendra Potnis, assistant professor at the University of Tennessee, investigated the factors responsible for the inability of 245 female slum-dwellers in India, who earn around $2 a day, to own a mobile phone. More than 90% of the respondents experienced more than two economic barriers discussed below, which prevented them from owning some of the least expensive mobile phones worth $15 or so on installments of $1 a month.

1. Fluctuating low personal income
2. Low personal savings
3. Lack of financial support from husbands
4. Cost of owning and maintaining a mobile phone
5. Low household income
6. Majority of financial dependents in family
7. Unexpected and unforeseen family expenses
8. Inherited debt

Read the post

7 security mistakes people make with their mobile device

Mobile devices, especially smartphones, have ushered businesses into a new era of productivity and working on-the-go. But with those advances and added convenience comes a wealth of security blunders just waiting to happen. Here are some of the worst mistakes users can make with their mobile devices and how to avoid them.

Failing to lock down your device
Not having the most up to date versions of your apps
Storing sensitive, work-related data on an unauthorized device
Opening questionable content
Not adhering to your company's social media policies
Not equipping employees' devices with some form of MDM or encryption
Using public or unsecure Wi-Fi

Read Full Post

Best Practices for Supporting 'Bring Your Own' Mobile Devices

This research addresses some of the support tactics we see used in organizations that have adopted "bring your own" (BYO) programs, where employees use personally owned tablets and smartphones for work. This research is intended for CIOs and staff responsible for planning, administering and supporting mobile devices.

Access the research report

Gartner: How Big Trends in Security, Mobile, Big data and Cloud will Change IT

When you go to a Gartner conference one of he main things you'll notice is the sheer volume of data they can generate on just about any IT topic. The recent Gartner Symposium/ITxpo in Orlando, Fla., was no different. The conference, attended by some 9,000 executives focused on the changes security challenges, mobile computing, big data and cloud will be bringing to IT in the near future.

Trying to get through it all can be daunting so we've tried to simplify that process by distilling a variety of Gartner ITxpo presentations and coming up with the most salient information.

So here goes. From the Gartner analysts, presentations on:

Read the full story

Interesting articles to read -- 20-09-2012

Interesting articles to read -- 20-09-2012

India's 2012 TR35: Top Innovators Under 35 Read

Exchange old mobile phone for cash at ATM machine! Read

National IT Policy okayed; aims to make 1 per family e-literate Read

Scrap To Silver: New regulations could herald an inflection point but it may be a while before e-waste transforms into wealth Read

Education and employability - a paradox? Read

10 Ways to Pack Lighter When You Travel Read

An outstanding speech from Kamalhaasan @ IIT Mumbai View

Archives

Survey: Trends in Mobile Collaboration Survey 2012: Info-graphics

Copiun Inc announced the results of its survey, conducted with International Marketing and Technology Solutions, Inc. (IMTS), the survey was designed to help IT decision makers determine the security and data risks of mobile collaboration. Key findings indicate more than fifty percent of the companies surveyed are now planning Mobile Productivity projects to allow employees to access, sync and share documents using mobile devices. The survey also reveals that the biggest challenges facing C-level executives and IT decision-makers in mobility are data security and compliance management. See info graphics

BYOD and Mobile Strategy

In this 42-page PDF guide, InfoWorld explains how to set up an effective BYOD program that is managed and secured, yet embraces the consumerization of IT spirit sought by users

iPhones, iPads, Androids, Windows Phones, and more are joining your business's suite of technology tools, driven by user demand and need. Most companies have opened up their networks to such devices, but big questions remain on how to do so securely, how to manage the new breed of devices to ensure compliance and information security while not unduly burdening users. This guide looks at all aspects of the issue, including the underlying consumerization trend,the role of policy-based management, device capabilities, and strategies for mobile device management (MDM) and mobile application management (MAM).

Visit to download