Remember, this is from December 10, 1993, when mobile phones looked like this:
…and cutting-edge mobile computing looked like this:
and this:
…and the browser, which wasn’t even a year old, looked like this:
Me, I’d be happy that I’m not in “cattle class”, but I feel the guy’s pain.
Spurred by the recent lifting of the ban on the use of light electronic devices on flights from gate to gate, the FCC (Federal Communications Commission) is now considering lifting the ban on in-flight calls. The ban was on concerns that phone calls made from airplanes, which travel up to 10 times the speed of land vehicles, would play havoc with ground-based cellular networks, especially with rapid switching from cell to cell. Recent advances now allow planes to carry their own “mini cellular towers”, obviating the technological reason for banning calls on flights.
The FCC are divided on the issue, but in a 3 to 2 vote they chose to seek public comment on a proposal to lift the ban. FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler seems to express different opinions on the matter, depending on who’s asking:
- To assuage the concerns about spending a cross-country flight trapped next to a chatterbox, he’s aid “Nothing will be different on your flight tomorrow. We’re just seeking comments on the proposal.”
- However, at a House hearing earlier today, he replied “strongly yes” when asked if he planned to lift the ban on in-flight calls. “This is the responsible thing to do. Where the rationale for the rule doesn’t exist, the rule shouldn’t exist.”
- In written testimony submitted for a congressional hearing on the issue, he tried to tread the middle ground: “I understand the consternation caused by the thought of your onboard seatmate disturbing the flight making phone calls. I do not want the person in the seat next to me yapping at 35,000 feet any more than anyone else. But we are not the Federal Courtesy Commission.”
- He reinforced his written statement that the FCC is not Emily Post when speaking at that congressional hearing “The FCC is the expert agency when it comes to technical communications issues. We are not the Federal Courtesy Commission. Our mandate from Congress is to oversee how networks function.”
- In an editorial he wrote for USA Today, he says “it’s not me, it’s you“: “In a free market such decisions belong in the hands of the airlines and their consumers.”
FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel was one of the 3 who voted for accepting public comments on lifting the ban, but she herself is against the proposal. She flies often, says she’s stuck in the dreaded middle seat near the rear of the plane, which would be made even worse by having to put up with a neighbour making calls. “This commission does not need to add to that burden,” she said.
The FCC isn’t the only U.S. government department weighing in on the issue. The DOT (Department of Transportation), whose jurisdiction includes air travel, is also seeking public comment — but on whether allowing such calls is “fair to consumers”. DOT Secretary Anthony Foxx says “Over the past few weeks, we have heard of concerns raised by airlines, travelers, flight attendants, members of Congress and others who are all troubled over the idea of passengers talking on cell phones in flight –- and I am concerned about this possibility as well.”
There’s been bipartisan cooperation on the “anti-in-flight calls” side, with Senators Lamar Alexander (R – Tennessee) and Diane Feinstein (D – California) introducing a bill to ban in-flight mobile phone conversations. ““Keeping phone conversations private on commercial flights may not be enshrined in the constitution, but it is certainly enshrined in common sense,” wrote Alexander in a news release.
This should be an interesting intersection: a body charged with regulating communications devices, another charged with regulating air travel, both trying to rewrite the rules for mobile technology, where both their jurisdictions are being changed and disrupted.
Creative Commons photo by Sam Churchill. Click to see the original.
We’ve had in-flight-calling in North America before, if you recall those bulky, wired phones with credit card readers installed above the meal tray ion the seat in front of you. Those are the products of a different time, when some people thought it was a little odd to walk down the street while having a conversation on your mobile phone, and certainly before we watched movies, checked email, or played Candy Crush on them. The high prices for using those phones also kept calls on them quite short (many of the calls started with “Guess where I’m calling from!” and were followed by making arrangements to meet at the destination airport).
Outside North America, there are about two dozen airlines who have the necessary “mini cell tower” technology installed on their aircraft and allow their passengers to make in-flight calls. There are cultures where phone etiquette and rules about things like personal space are different, and in some cases, there are cultures where in-flight calls are probably a small annoyance compared to in-flight binge drinking.
There are also issues of the practicality of enforcing the ban on in-flight calls. Now that mobile phones are small computers are more than portable phones, but computers that just happen to let you make phone calls, allowing SMS messaging and the use of apps that use cellular data to access the internet but disallowing voice calls is legal hair-splitting. On the increasing number of flights that have wifi service, what’s the practical difference between holding a Skype voice chat on a laptop or tablet and a phone call?
The FCC is quite likely to lift the ban on in-flight calls. As Chairman Wheeler points out, their mandate is to regulate the functioning of networks, and not the behaviour of individuals using them. However, the DOT, as a body that regulates transportation, may be able to institute a ban on the use of voice communications technologies in flights if a threat to safety or the smooth functioning of a flight exists. Veda Shook, president of the Association of Flight Attendants International, makes such a case:
“As first responders in the aircraft cabin, flight attendants know that this reckless FCC proposal would have negative effects on aviation safety and security. In far too many operational scenarios, passengers making phone calls could extend beyond a mere nuisance, creating risks that are far too great. As the last line of defense in our nation’s aviation system, flight attendants understand the importance of maintaining a calm cabin environment, and passengers agree.”
In the likely case that the the ban on in-flight calls is lifted, it still doesn’t mean that you’ll be able to make a call on any U.S. flight. The airline would still have the final say on whether you can make a call, and even if they allowed them, they’d still have to install the “mini tower” technology.
Click the graph to see the source data.
In the end, the airlines will likely leave it to the passengers to vote with their dollars. If the data from a recent survey conducted by Quinnipiac University holds true for the market in general, passengers will vote 2 to 1 against in-flight voice calls. Delta Air Lines has already announced that they won’t allow in-flight voice calls, and Southwest’s CEO has said that he doesn’t favour a change in polciy, citing the Quinnipiac survey.
Fortinet, a vendor of network security appliances and online threat management services, recently had the market research company Vision Critical survey 3,200 university graduate-level people aged 21 to 32 who owned their own smartphone, tablet, or laptop. If you’re unable to access the funny pictures at AcidCow.com at the office, chances are it some piece of Fortinet software that’s stopping you. Chances are also that “Generation Y”, a.k.a. “The Millennials” — those born between 1980 and 2000, and who are the target of the survey — are going to try to find some way around that restriction.
Generation Y grew up never knowing a world without DOS or its descendants, and those born in the latter half of that generation likely never knew a time when it was unusual to have a computer in the house, never mind a networked one. Most of this generation are either entering the workforce or well into the start of their post-schooling working lives, and they’re the next generation of leaders, decision-makers, and department heads. It is these people that Fortinet wanted Vision Critical to interview about their attitudes and opinions on corporate policies, rules and regulations on mobile devices and their use in the workplace.
The key findings in Fortinet’s 19-page report on Gen Y are:
- They believe that BYOD empowers workers. 45% of participants in the survey said that being able to bring their own devices to work lets them get their work done.
- They’re ready to use wearable technology. 50% of participants agreed that when wearable technology becomes available and affordable, and came with the right apps, they’d use it at work.
- They’ll break company mobile policies that get in their way. “Up to 51% of the sample” said that they would break rules and regulations that restricted the use of their own devices, cloud storage and services and wearable technologies for work. This represents an increase in defiance from a similar 2012 survey, where 42% said they’d go against such policies.
- Their devices have been compromised. “High instances of sample respondents” say they’ve been cyberattacked.
- Some of them were well-versed in security, other could stand to learn more. While a “hardcore” segment of the people surveyed — about 20 to 25% of the participants — knew about such things as APTs and DDoSs, a “worrying minority” — about 11% of them — claimed never to have heard of terms like “cybercrime”.
The report on Fortinet’s survey, Internet Security Census 2013, spans 19 pages, covers the findings above in greater detail, and is available for free in exchange for some contact information. To get a free PDF copy of the report, go to Fortinet’s Internet Security Census 2013 page.
There’s some big news from Shopify today: they’ve closed their third round of funding led by OMERS Ventures and Insight Venture Partners, securing $100 million in funding, The funding will be used to continue their trajectory towards becoming the way that retail sales are done, whether online, offline, or a mix of the two.
According to the Wall Street Journal:
People familiar with the deal said the company’s Series C valuation was “near $1 billion.” The company declined to comment on revenue but a representative said it had 80,000 active merchants using its software today.
Reaching the $1-billion level is extremely rare. Website TechCrunch recently determined that only 39 tech firms born since 2003 in the U.S., including Facebook and Twitter, have reached the $1-billion level, as valued by public or private markets, making them members of the so-called “Unicorn Club.”
Here are more reports about the deal:
- The New York Times: Shopify Raises $100 Million in Third Round of Financing
- USA Today: E-commerce start-up Shopify raises $100 million
- TechCrunch: Shopify Raises $100M To Drop The ‘E’ And Become The Commerce Company That Spans On- And Offline
- Mashable: Shopify Raises $100 Million to Tackle Offline Commerce
- GigaOm: Shopify raises $100 million Series C to expand offline into general commerce
Congratulations to Tobi, Daniel, Cody, Harley, et. al. on a job well done!
Screenshot of Instapaper on the iPad.
Instapaper, the granddaddy of “save this web article for later” readers, is free for a limited time. I’ll let Wade “World Wide Wade” Roush explain it, as he did in his Xconomy summary of reading apps, 10 Apps & Sites That Bring Back the Joy of Reading:
Instapaper works like this: Once you’ve signed up for the service, you go to the Instapaper website and grab the “Read Later” bookmarklet, a little button that you can drag and drop into the bookmarks bar of your browser. Then when you come across a Web page that you want to read later, you just click on this button, which activates a script that extracts the article text and saves it on Instapaper’s cloud servers (or, optionally, sends it straight to your Kindle reading device).
…
I love the iPhone version of the app and I use it a lot when I’m standing in line at the grocery store or killing time in between other activities. I use the iPad version for longer, more intense reading sessions at home. My favorite feature: tilt-scrolling, which uses the accelerometer in the iPhone/iPad to scroll the text up or down, depending on which way you tilt the device.
If you’d like to see a review of the latest version of Instapaper, check out this one at MacStories: Instapaper 5.0: Sorting and Filtering Options, Tweaked Interface for iOS 7 and this Lifehacker “read later” app comparison.
There you have it: Instapaper, free for a limited time. Go get it!
Let’s see if we can make the future better than this, shall we?
(In case you don’t get the reference, here’s the relevant scene from WALL-E…)
This article also appears in The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century.
Internet analytics firm comScore recently released their data from their MobiLens and Mobile Metrix services, creating a snapshot of smartphone usage in the United States for October 2013. There’s nothing particularly surprising in this snapshot: the current numbers reflect the same general trends over the past year.
62% of the U.S. population has a smartphone
Click the picture to see the source data.
As of October 2013, there were 149 million smartphone users age 13 and older in the U.S., which accounts for 62.5% of the country’s population. This represents an increase of 4.1% over the previous snapshot, taken in July 2013. It’s very likely we’ll see smartphone users accounting for two-thirds of the population in early 2014.
Apple is the leading smartphone OEM; Samsung has the fastest-growing share
Click the graph to see the source data.
In October 2013, Apple was the leading smartphone OEM, having captured 40.6% of U.S. smartphone subscribers age 13 and up, an increase of 0.2% since the July 2013 snapshot. Samsung is in second place, with 25.4% of the market (an increase of 1.3% since July 2013), followed by Motorola, HTC, and LG, each with about 7%.
The OEMs with the biggest changes in market share were Samsung, who showed a gain of 1.3% since July 2013, and HTC, who showed an equal percentage loss in the same time period.
Top smartphone OEMs
3-month average ending October 2013 vs. 3-month average ending July 2013
Source: comScore MobiLens
| Vendor | Jul 2013 | Oct 2013 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Apple | 40.4% | 40.6% | 0.2% |
| Samsung | 24.1% | 25.4% | 1.3% |
| Motorola | 6.9% | 7.0% | 0.1% |
| HTC | 8.0% | 6.7% | -1.3% |
| LG | 6.8% | 6.6% | -0.2% |
Android and iOS combined maintain over 90% of the mobile platform market
Click the graph to see the source data.
Android was the leading platform in October 2013, with 52.2% of the market (an increase of 0.4% over the July 2013 snapshot), followed by iOS at 40.6% (an increase of 0.2%). BlackBerry and Windows Phone are still fighting for distant third place at 3.6% and 3.2% respectively, with BlackBerry’s share having fallen 0.7% and Windows Phone’s having risen 0.2%. The Symbian market share continues its decline to zero, having dropped from 0.3% to 0.2% from July to October 2013.
With all the bad news about BlackBerry, including the oral history published in this week’s Bloomberg Businessweek and the recommendations from analysts like Gartner to abandon the BlackBerry platform, we should expect Windows Phone to take the lead in the race for distant third place when the next comScore snapshot comes out.
Top smartphone platforms
3-month average ending October 2013 vs. 3-month average ending July 2013
Source: comScore MobiLens
| Platform | Jul 2013 | Oct 2013 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Android | 51.8% | 52.2% | 0.4% |
| iOS | 40.4% | 40.6% | 0.2% |
| BlackBerry | 4.3% | 3.6% | -0.7% |
| Windows Phone | 3.0% | 3.2% | 0.2% |
| Symbian | 0.3% | 0.2% | -0.1% |
The big players have the top sites for mobile visitors
Click the graph to see the source data.
These figures shouldn’t be surprising: the sites that act as portals to a vast field of information, whether search, news, shopping, or social contacts were the top sites visited using smartphones in October 2013. Nearly 9 out of 10 smartphone users access Google’s and Facebook’s sites, nearly 8 out of 10 visited a Yahoo! sites, nearly two-thirds visited Amazon, and about half visited Apple.
In case you were wondering:
- Turner Digital includes CNN.com, NBA.com, Yahoo! Sports NBA and Yahoo! Sports NASCAR, CartoonNetwork.com as well as Funny or Die and The Smoking Gun.
- CBS Interactive includes the various CBS news and sports sites, as well as the foodie site CHOW.com, a number of tech news sites (CNET, TechRepublic, ZDNet), ComicVine, a number of gamer sites (Gamespot, Giant Bomb, and the French Gamekult), a number of music sites (last.fm, MP3.com. Radio.com), and sites aimed at the Chinese market (the automobile site xcar.com.cn and the electronic gadget site zol.com.cn).
- Glam Media includes Glam, Ning and all the community sites under its umbrella, Foodie, the family lifestyle site Tend and the men’s lifestyle site Brash.
The big players also have the top apps
Click the graph to see the source data.
In the world of apps, there’s a strong presence of mobile platform vendors Google and Apple, and one would-be (and may-yet-be) mobile platform vendor: Facebook. Not only does Facebook have the top app with a commanding 20% lead over the second-place Google Play, they also own two other apps in the top 15: Instagram and Facebook Messenger. Google also has a strong showing with 5 apps in the upper portion of the top 15: Google Play, Google Search, YouTube, GMail, and Google Maps. Apple’s app suite and Maps app occupy two slots in the top 15, and Yahoo! have two apps there: their Stocks and Weather Widget apps.
It’s Apple’s, Samsung’s, and Google’s world, we just live in it
With Apple as the #1 OEM and delivering the #2 mobile platform, Samsung being the #2 OEM and effectively being the Android standard bearer, and Apple and Google have strong showings in both mobile websites and apps, these three companies define the shape of the mobile universe, and the trends seem to indicate that they will continue to do so through 2014. Whether you build apps, accessories, or enterprises on mobile tech, you need to take this into account.
Making longer-term predictions is a riskier game in an industry that was redefined less than a decade ago. Fortunes change in a matter of months, not years, and while the Apple/Samsung/Google troika seem invincible now, think back to the 1990s when Microsoft was the 800-pound gorilla of tech and most startup business plans ended with a statement like “and then we’ll get bought out by Redmond”.
As a final reminder of how quickly and completely this industry can change, here’s Michael DeGusta’s tweet from September, made just after Nokia’s acquisition by Microsoft:
The top 4 smartphone brands of 2006: 1. Nokia: died today. 2. RIM: dead soon. 3. Motorola: dead sooner than you think. 4. Palm: long dead.
— Michael DeGusta (@degusta) September 3, 2013