Contemplating Smartphone Business Models & Access

I recently made a trip to the Verizon store that really gave me an in depth look at how the recent "no contracts" and "6 month upgrades" business model changes are influencing the access and affordability to smartphones​. Basically with the trend started by T-mobile, here in the US, all of the other major carriers (AT&T and Verizon) have adopted similar "leasing" business models to entice and facilitate more people to get more smartphones and continue upgrading their smartphones at incredibly high rates (up to 2 upgrades per year as opposed to the traditional new phones every 2 years). Before upgrading that often was a luxury and quiet costly, and now with these new leasing-like business models it's not so costly and much easier. This makes things ever more interesting since with each new phone there is heighten improvements in functionalities and tools, but also the smartphone market is becoming more diverse and less Apple dominated, though iPhones do continue to maintain a huge market share. 

The bigger question that this recent visit has made me think about is how is this going to impact mobility, economic and health access in cities.

Afghan Women Access to Mobile Phones

Check-out the impressive stat's in USAid's cool infographic about Afghan Women's Access to Mobile Technology.

US Clean Energy Facts From Obama's 1st Term

There is no doubt that clean energy sources increased significantly in President Obama's first term in office. Here are some of the highlights:

1. Boosted fuel standards for cars and trucks that is expected to reduce climate-warming pollution (like CO2) by 6 billion metric tons.
2. Wind energy production has doubled in the last 4 years.
3. Solar installations have increased 6-fold in the last 4 years.
4. In 2007 the Supreme Court ruled that carbon emissions are indeed a pollutant as defined by the Clean Air Act.

However, despite the advances in clean energy right now in the US "Energy Independence" is still code for more mining and more drilling but it doesn't need to be so in the future. Energy independence needs to become more interrelated to weaning ourselves off of fossil fuels with renewable energy. Subsidies for renewable energy are being reduced and in some cases coming to an end.

On the other hand, oil subsidies remain stronger than ever even after decades of exponential industry growth and multiple economic downturns and hardly come into to question. Moreover with all of the big craze around natural gas in the US, many are forgetting that methane that escapes from drilling and pumping natural gas is 70 times more harmful than CO2 emissions.

In fact the head of the Environmental Defense Fund, Fred Krupp says that "Fugitive gas is the biggest unknown of all the US emissions sources."

The Mobile Phone Internet Revolution Projections

Here are two a very interesting projections I picked from Al Gore while reading the recent article about him in Time Magazine ("From Chads to Riches" by David Von Drehle). While the focus of the article was Gore himself, Gore provided the author with two projections for the future of Internet use in the 21st century which somehow cleverly made it into the piece:

1. Mobile-only Internet users are expected to increase 56-fold over the next 5 years.
2. Information flow over smartphones is expected to increase 47-fold over the next 5 years.

IBM Smarter Cities Tests and Finds...

Using one of its own facilities to in a way "beta" test some of its new building analytics gadgets the IBM Smarter Cities team found some interesting cost-saving metrics to lure new customers to its portfolio of data-based services. In their Ireland facility they found that replacing paper towels in bathrooms with high-speed hand-dryers saved the IBM Ireland Research Lab building around 5,000 euros a year. In addition, the hand-dryers also reduced the environmental impact involved with processing 400,000 pieces of waste paper.