In the USA Today dated May 15th, 2008, there was a snapshot of a statistic on the front page that caught my eye. It read:

“Nearly 90% of US adults are cellphone users, up from 77% at the end of 2006. Phones used at home: 89% Cellphone and 79% Land line.”
Source: Harris Interactive survey of 9,132 adults conducted online between October 2007 and January 2008

What I’ve observing as a trend in communications is now clearly validated by this survey. In my own personal kith and kin, my parents no longer have a land-line telephone and use their mobile phone as their primary mode of communication. While my wife and I have a land-line telephone at home, we find ourselves using the mobile phone the vast majority of the time. And based on this survey, we’re not alone.

There are a suite of reasons why we are seeing a greater dependency on the mobile phone for our lives. It really comes to increased accessibility: We are constantly on the move, and getting a call on my land-line telephone would largely lead to the caller being dropped into voicemail, and we all know how much we hate to hear that automated greeting ourselves when we call others. The mobile phone has become the device that each of us carry wherever we go, making us easier to reach, and hence making it the primary phone for many of us. While I can call-forward my land-line phone to my mobile, this technique essentially minimizes the value of that land-line telephone, underscoring the importance of the cellular phone.

There are times, however, when the mobile phone presents challenges. Coverage issues (I have a tough time at home), controlling costs, and dealing with multiple numbers – one for work, one for home, and for my mobile), are issues that I didn’t have to deal with before.

Cell phones make me more mobile, and being mobile lets me get more “things” done in the same span of time. Somehow, having more spare time continues to elude me…

Sandeep

Pej Roshan, VP of Marketing & Co-Founder, and Tim Olson, CTO & Co-Founder of Agito Networks address some of the common questions around location, and in particular how Agito takes advantage of location inside the RoamAnywhere Mobility Router, Agito’s eFMC offering. Watch the video (transcript of the highlights below the jump)

As mentioned in the video, here are some useful links to learn more about how Agito uses location to make eFMC, WiFI, and VoWLAN enterprise-grade.

Agito RoamAnywhere Architecture
Agito eFMC Whitepaper
Request a demo!
(more…)

Ok, so there is technically no one gPhone, not yet anyway. But while many openly pan the Android announcement, I thought this is definitely a “game changing” event.

The nut of it is that the Open Handset Alliance (OHA) has announced Android, a linux-based, open platform for mobile phones. While details are slim today (the SDK is supposed to be available on the OHA website on 11/12/2007), it seems Android is as open as can be:

“The platform is every piece of software you need to build a cell phone,” added Andy Rubin, Google’s director of mobile platforms.

Excited? You should be.

An open platform will enable solution providers to continue to innovate with significantly more freedom. Today, feature phones (phones with closed operating systems) and smartphones (phones with an extensible operating system, like Windows Mobile or Symbian) have hardware and software access either

• intentionally crippled
• access blocked altogether

by the carriers. What is interesting is this is as frustrating to mobile phone manufacterers as it is to mobile phone users (consumers and enterprises alike). Just ask Ed Zander, CEO of Motorola:

“I hate my customers,” Zander recently huffed in reference to the carriers, according to The Wall Street Journal. (InformationWeek)

Android has the potential to end this type of arbitrary carrier blocking and tackling. As the Android folks will tell you, Android opens the door of possibilities, providing developers the capability to create new, innovative applications.

This is key to enterprises, large and small. Without a doubt more and more enterprises are mobilizing. I hear about it almost everyday from the many enterprises I speak with.

So is Android the enterprise mobility panacea? At this point, who knows? But it has the potential to make some very tough problems become very solvable. If the OHA can execute well, if its members can deliver in each of their areas, (namely handset vendors that deliver a variety of robust, aesthetically-pleasing, and ergonomic handsets) and if the carriers can resist the urge to lock down the OS (yes, it seems despite being an open platform, carriers may be able to close it), then the OHA has a real shot at not only delivering, but pushing other platforms, carriers, and handset manufacturers to do the same.

As Rob Markovich, our CEO, says, this is mile one in the marathon. I would like to think that with Android we are off to a solid 6-minute mile. Let’s see how the remaining 25 go.

Pej

I have a rule when picking out a greeting card in the Hallmark isle – if I read a card and it makes me laugh out loud, I buy it. Something similar can be said about tech articles and blogs – if it makes me laugh out loud, why not blog about it?

I found myself in that situation last week reading Richard Martin’s InformationWeek Over the Air blog (see Carriers Still Not Jumping On Convergence Caravan). He was commenting on Infonetics Research’s findings that carriers claim to be jumping on the FMC bandwagon at a tune of 80% of them offering services over the next eight months. That wasn’t the funny part, although it did raise my eyebrows. What cracked me up was Mr. Martin’s editorialization:
(more…)

Upon returning from vacation, I read Business Communication Review Editor Eric Krapf’s post in earnest, and agree with his many insightful points about the cost savings of offloading business cellular calls to a voice over WLAN implementation. In addition, he cites data from Nokia on the percentage of workers using their cell phone for work, and the difficulties enterprises have in nailing down just how many cell phone users they have.
(more…)