Mobile Health Part II

This week, UK-based Applied Nanodetectors brought a prototype of their breath-analyzing technology to an industry event here in Japan. This type of innovation adds further support to the fact that these types of services will become increasingly important in both developed and developing economies around the world. Remote medicine may no longer need to be so remote... Here is the full story from the Small Times

4 Billion Mobile Subscribers

Whew! A little later than the expected Q4 2008 ITU expectations for this milestone, but today the GSMA announced that the world has truly surpassed the 4 billion mark. That's just shy of 59% of the world's 6.8 billion people. And factoring out those too young or too old to text and make phone calls, we are reaching an astounding level of connectivity.

For all those out there who are predicting that the mobile phone is ushering in a whole new way of business and living our lives, with a diffusion level of these proportions, it's getting nearly impossible to argue that these can and will ever stay the same.

And if we add in Marshall McLuhan's feelings that just the association with a new media (as opposed to active adoption and usage), leads to fundamental changes in our behaviors, the 1st degree non-subscribing connections of these 4 billion mobile phone users are also being influenced.

The takeaway? It's an exciting time to be studying and exploring the impact of mobile technologies and services on consumer behavior!