Genre Change
Genre 1: Magazine Article
ABC National – August 2006
Here Comes the Mobile Phone
Antony Funnell
Mobile Phone Networks is one electronic media device setting trends in new technology application, as reported in ABC Radio National Summer, last Thursday, 8 30 am in ABC, presented by Gerald Tooth. This new application serves as a new global mobile adventure guide for the future access to the myriad forms of media, such as music, video and games.
The guest in the program was Jennifer Wilson, the Managing Director of the HWW Company, which is a publisher of the mobile phone content. Wilson emphasized the importance of the mobile phone for the generation C, composed of the group of people ranging from 13 to 27 years olds, and for whom the mobile phone is with a primary importance. The Managing Director points out that the mobile phone provides these individuals with the edge of connecting to the rest of the world, to their friends, and for continuing their social networks in the whole sense of the community.
Wilson says, ‘the mobile phone is an incredibly important and quite, what we call a disruptive device, in that it’s dramatically changed the way that people live their lives and the way they choose to communicate with each other. It’s an incredibly personal device that people have, and people use it in ways that don’t use anything else, including computers’.
Two forms of social networks are being built, namely, digital public spaces and social network. A digital public space is a space wherein one chooses to make personal information available to the public, and receive validation through it, while a social network is choosing to interact with people. Through the mobile phone network, individuals can make digital public spaces possible, and create social networks.
Wilson emphasized that 8% if the population using the mobile content is fairly gamers, and with the more advance mobile phone networks, must expect more and richer gaming, such as the morphing of hand-held devices into mobile phones. Although the developing mobile phone network can replace the Ipod market, this phenomenon is yet to be proven.
Neeraj Roy, the Managing Director of Hungama Mobile in Mumbai, India is another guest in Tooth’s show, and spoke about the overwhelming expansion of the mobile entertainment industry in India, with an emphasis on the music, imagery, video and gaming industry.
With the success of Bollywood in India’s industry, the mobile phone network serves to be a good avenue for the Indian market, with an estimated $ 124-billion business, of which one-third is the mobile entertainment by 2010, and as a company, the Hungama Mobile has about 70% of the Bollywood content.
Mark Ollila from the Telcogames, a Swedish-based company developing games for mobile phones, reports that the new technology incorporated in the latest generation of mobile phones will be doing everything that would even replace MP3 players. He emphasized that the global sales figures showing music capable smart phones are already outselling Ipods, and because Smartphones are cheaper, which are also music and media capable.
In replacing MP3 players, the Smartphones allow the user to play music, watch videos and even full-length videos, have communication with friends, access the Internet, watch television, and have media rich experiences such as gaming. This device would surely hit the market, as it provides the users with a variety of services all in one gadget.
Another guest presented by the program was Deb Polson, the Creative Director at the Australasian CRC Interaction Design, who is behind the development of what is called the location-based game that brings together the Internet and mobile phones to bring a new type of experience to a visit to an art gallery of museum.
Scoot is the name of the game. It is a mixed reality adventure game, and has its roots from the early days of Dungeons and Dragons. It was designed to enable families to play together in museums, galleries, and public spaces, similar to a treasure hunt or the Da Vinci Code.
Polson emphasized that he became interested with location-based games to maximize the use of the GPS, combined with a mobile device, in interacting in a physical space and get individuals to move around. This would make gaming more interesting and virtual in that sense.
Elina Koivisto, a Research Engineer from Nokia’s Game House, is supplementing the application of the location-based game, taking phone games to a next level. The mobile company enhances the location-based game, as it involves the interaction of the gamer to his virtual world, with his or her quest of fighting monsters in different areas or locations in the real life environment.
Although the target market of the improved and developed mobile phone network belongs to the Generation C or the younger generation, as an additional feature, the mobile phone network can also enable watching television and reading the newspaper for the older generation. With this, the entire population would have the access to the services and features offered by the mobile phone network in all countries worldwide.
The show was wrapped up by the words of John Buchanan, a Professor from the Carnegie Mellon Entertainment Technology Center in Adelaide. He emphasized that we must continue to do the things that we have always done. However, finding new and innovative ways of using such technologies would be better, such that it would provide a variety of experiences, aside from delivering liner media to users.
The use of these new applications would be one relevant and interactive experience. However, the development of technology must not be purely concentrated on entertainment, instead must be for more productive purposes.
Genre 2: Set of Mobisodes
Antony Funnell
“This week we look again at the new generation of mobile phones, the multi-media platform in your hand that’s going to change your life in ways you never imagined, and maybe kill your Ipod. The mobile phone is being transformed into a data caster that’s opening up a world of entertainment. It’s a device that people will use in the future to access all forms of media, be it music, video or games”.
Jennifer Wilson: Managing Director of HWW
“The biggest market for this remains that classic Generation C demographic, if you want the 14 the 14 to 27… About 8% to 15% of the people, who use content regularly, are fairly regular gamers. However, you will start to see more and richer gaming. You have to consider that games like Tomb Raider, and Doom, can be played on mobile phones in a very rich environment. And it is interesting that hand-held devices, for example, hand-held media players, music players like Ipods, digital cameras, or PSP Nintendo devices, they are now morphing into the mobile phone. So as the mobile phone becomes more of a converged device, it becomes even more important to people’s lives. And I think we’ll start to see people using those services a lot more, basically as entertainment and to interact with either other people or to interact just with an application on the phone”.
Neeraj Roy: Managing Director of Hungama
“Of course Bollywood is a very, very small fraction of that, but if I were to aggregate both the opportunity in India because India is the fastest growing mobile market in the world right now, we’ve been adding about 5-million new subscribers each month for the last six months or so, and we’re staring at anything between 300-million, 350-million consumers by 2010… So we’re hoping that there is a significant business opportunity that we’ll be in a position to create… it is a large enough opportunity, … so we’re not just focusing only on the mobile business, we’re also looking at the Internet business in a big way…”.
Mark Ollila: Co-Founder and Non-Executive Director of Telcogames
“I believe the mobile phone is a device, and it’s becoming more and more powerful every time. Like over the next two years, we’re going to see more and more devices, which have more enhanced graphics abilities, which are basically equivalent to what we see in PCs of only a few years ago and things like this… allow you to play music, but also have in certain cases the ability to actually watch videos, and some of these phones have the ability to actually play full-length videos, if you buy a card to put into it. And these abilities of actually having communication with friends and so forth with media rich experiences such as gaming as well, which in itself is a huge market, means that the device is becoming a one-all device, it can do everything for you”.
Gaming Mobile Phone: Deb Polson and Elina Koivisto
Deb Polson – “Well Scoot, we call it a mixed reality adventure game, and it kind of has its roots in my early days of Dungeons and Dragons… and when they discover those clues they communicate what they find through SMS back to the game world, and the game world automatically sends them more SMSs that basically take them on a trail through the site, teaching them about the history of the site, taking them to services, introducing them to interactives, asking them questions about what they see in paintings, in artifacts”.
Elina Koivisto – “The location is probably the easiest context to use and you could even think that the mobile phone camera is the sensor, and you could use the pictures that the player is taking from his surroundings for creating content in this game”.
John Buchanan: Professor of the Entertainment Technology Center in South Australia
“My primary challenge is that it’s easy to do the same thing again and again. It’s easy to turn these new technologies into delivery for what we already know… I’m simply saying that in addition to continuing to do what we’ve always done, let’s try to find new and innovative ways of using these technologies to provide different experiences other than simply the delivery of liner media”.
Commentary
The development of technology has led to the continuous improvement to the mobile phone industry, which is responsible for the effective communication of individuals around the world, regardless of distance and culture. Due to the improvement of the mobile phone industry, including in the gaming, music, communication, and video technology, more and more individuals are using mobile phones around the world.
It has been reported that mobile phones are getting more and more sophisticated, thus, its development becomes similar with computers, wherein functions and usage are being created and updated regularly (2004). The launching of the 3G system serves a good purpose for it users, to further enhance communication and interrelations. Some phones also serve computing functions, which enable to replace other devices, including laptops, PDAs and other gadgets (2004). From the article referred to above, and the article by Lara Sinclair, entitled ‘Soapies the New Mobile Ring-ins’, it can be understood that several features of the mobile phone have been continuously undergoing technological development and improvement, such as in different applications, including music, games, video and camera. Different developed companies are supporting the development of such software programs that would enhance the use of mobile phones, from purely functional and practical to amazingly enjoyable. I believe that with the development of the features of the mobile phone, as discussed in the radio show, more and more will be using mobile phones in the market, thus, increasing the sales and production of mobile units and accessories significantly. This would be important not only to mobile phone producers and manufacturers, but with the users or consumers, for the development of such gadgets would not only improve and enhance better communication systems, but also create a positive and solid relationships with one another.
However, although the development of such features are enjoyable and technologically impressive, I believe that the development of such technologies can be further applied in more relevant issues, such as in education, language, and in governance. Instead of developing much improved games, video, and music software programs, mobile phone companies can help improve mobile phone features for ‘mobile education’, which convey great expediency to learners outside the campus, who do not always have the luxury of time to find computes that are Internet-ready to be able to obtain essential information from their schools or universities. With this type of educational service, both the teachers and the students can access the services whenever they need them ( 2005). Another useful mobile application, which can be further improved by mobile phone companies, is the MALL or the Mobile Assisted Language Learning, which assist learners in terms of language development. This must be further given attention and study, for learning a new language would be difficult using mobile phones, having the slowest potential for development, compared to PC email users and mobile phone email users. This is ascribed to comparative speed of typing compared to speaking, and the comparative typing speed on mobile thumb pads compared to keyboards ( 2006). In relation to governance, the expertise of the speakers in the radio show can be used significantly to improve the application of mobile phones in the government. An example of such implementations is the installation of 1,000,000 mobile telephones with Internet access in Bangladesh, which resulted to the growth in the use of mobile phones in the country, and expanded rapidly across a broad spectrum in its business community (2003). With this, the country became more open to international trade and transactions, which contributed to its growth and development as a nation.
Credit:ivythesis.typepad.com
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