Smartphone Users' Privacy Betrayed By Their Gadget Sensors, Says Study

Dugdale, Andy. "Smartphone Users' Privacy Betrayed By Their Gadget Sensors, Says Study." Fast Company, January 29, 2013. 

From the article: "Research into smartphone security has revealed that your phone's sensors could help criminals unlock your stolen gadget. And, given that these elements all come as standard on most smartphonemodels, and are not subject to the same controls as other phone functions, they are a bigger security risk. The study was carried out by a visiting professor at Swarthmore College, who analyzed data captured from a smartphone's accelerometer--that's the gadget that analyzes the direction your phone is tilting or moving and turns the screen accordingly, and used for games like Doodle Jump--and found it could be used to work out where someone tapped the screen." Read more

More Than 700 Million Smartphones Shipped in 2012 as Apple, Samsung Dominate

Fried, Ina. "More Than 700 Million Smartphones Shipped in 2012 as Apple, Samsung Dominate." The Wall Street Journal, January 24, 2013.  

From the article: "A record 700 million smartphones were shipped in 2012, with more than half of those coming from industry leaders Samsung and Apple.

Samsung shipped an estimated 213 million smartphones — roughly 30 percent of the market — according toStrategy Analytics.

Apple, meanwhile, saw its shipments rise 46 percent to 135.8 million, giving the company about the same 19 percent of the market it had a year earlier." Read more

Your Gadgets Are Slowly Breaking the Internet

Talbot, David. "Your Gadgets Are Slowly Breaking the Internet." MIT Technology Review, January 9, 2013. 

From the article: "Behind all the dazzling mobile-ready electronics products on display at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this week is a looming problem: how to make the networks that support all these wireless devices function robustly and efficiently.  

With less fanfare than you’d see in Vegas, potential solutions are arising in labs in Pittsburgh, Los Angeles, and New Brunswick, New Jersey. The grand challenge is to overhaul the Internet to better serve an expected flood of 15 billion network-connected devices by 2015—many of them mobile—up from five billion today, according to Intel estimates." Read more

ICT for Development: Solutions Seeking Problems?

Chaudhuri, Anindya. "ICT for Development: Solutions Seeking Problems?" Journal of Information Technology 27 (2012): 326-338. 

From the report: "This paper investigates information and communication technologies for development (ICT4D) projects from around the world. It finds that computer and Internet promotion schemes usually fail despite active support, but mobile penetration in even the poorest countries is deepening organically. It argues that mobiles have emotional appeal because talking is a universal psycho-sociological propensity while the other two are principally utilitarian technologies that have to generate returns on investment. The search for killer apps is likely to be fruitless because technological adoption is conditional upon need and absorptive capacity. The paper raises questions about the continuing support for ICT4D among proponents." Read more

Cell Phone Activities 2012

Duggan, Maeve and Lee Rainie. "Cell Phone Activities 2012." Pew Internet and American Life Project, November 25, 2012.

From the report: "Fully 85% of American adults own a cell phone and now use the devices to do much more than make phone calls. Cell phones have become a portal for an ever-growing list of activities. In nationally representative phone surveys in the spring and summer, the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project obtained readings on some of the most popular activities including: 1) Taking pictures (82%), 2) Sending/receiving texts (80%), 3) Accessing the Internet (56%), and 4) Sending/receiving e-mail (50%)." Read more

Mobile Phones—Especially 3G Ones—Make Economies Grow Faster

Snow, Jackie. "Mobile Phones—Especially 3G Ones—Make Economies Grow Faster." Quartz, November 25, 2012.

From the article: "Now there is evidence that improving mobile Internet access helps economies too. A recent study examined the effect of faster 3G wireless data connections replacing slower 2G ones. The study by the GSM Association mobile trade group, Deloitte and Cisco, looked at 96 developed and developing markets from 2008 to 2011. When a market experienced a 10% shift from 2G to 3G, GDP per capita growth increased by an average of 0.15 percentage points. A separate look into 14 countries between 2005 to 2010 found that a doubling of mobile data use led to an increase of 0.5 percentage points in per capita growth." Read more

See also

"What is the Impact of Mobile Telephony on Economic Growth?" Report prepared by Deloitte for the GSM Association, November 2012.