US data usage soars, right?

by: admin Wednesday, March 28th, 2007

Rating: not too good to question

According to Steve Largent, President of CTIA last year the US mobile data market was worth USD15.2bn, up 77% on 2005. Also, mobile users now amount to 225 million.

On the data front, as this presumably includes SMS (it invariably does) it disguises the poor take-up of what we mean by data services - ie using the Internet via mobile for communication, discovery, purchases etc.
This is even though there are lots of bucket rate data tariffs in the US.

Cingular’s Chris Black recently talked with passion about increasing the uptake of SMS, even the notion of holding town meetings to teach adults the joys of text. Right after that Cingular, Verizon and Sprint put up the [already high] price of SMS - don’t forget in the that sender AND receivers pay. Funny way of going about it, right.

We predict an explosion in IM via mobile browsers - without anyone holding town meetings to show kids how to do it.