Christian posted about something I noticed in my own life earlier this year. About 5 years ago I saw a talk from Tomi Ahonen where he discussed multiple SIM ownership in Finland and mentioned the number of devices he carried with him personally. "Yeah yeah" I thought, filing him mentally under "crazy Finn" and getting back to business.
But he was, of course, completely right and it's happened, hasn't it? When I moved my home broadband to the 3 USB dongle, I became one of those multiple SIM owners without even noticing it - and at the rate these things are selling I'm guessing there are quite a few of us. The SIM sitting inside the dongle is completely irrelevant to me - I don't use it for anything else - but it's there nonetheless. In 3 years time I wonder how many more devices I'll own which quietly accept those distinctive little cards.
(And note I've not even *touched* on what this must be doing to the so-called wi-fi "industry" which has been "just about" to disrupt the Vodafones and O2s of this world for nearly 10 years now...)
Tom, I think the wifi industry is doing just fine embedding wifi into anything that moves, and some things that don't. But the wifi 'industry' to which you refer has moved on: it's now social networks and web 2.0 that's going to destroy the top-down hierarchical corporate structures of The Man. No wait, that was blogging that was going to destroy the top-down hierarchical corporate structures. Maybe it's Twitter that is going to destroy the top-down hierarchical corporate structures by using the web, IM, and SMS seamlessly.
Yes, that must be it. Breathless revolutionaries of the next new thing unite!
Posted by: Dave Ph | May 11, 2008 at 07:35 PM
Dave - I can't tell whether you're being sarcastic, or right. And I like that :)
Twitter as the future of all communication also tickles me...
Posted by: Tom Hume | May 12, 2008 at 12:26 PM
And look what Tomi is saying about SMS usage and the direct correlation between average number of messages sent per day, per subscriber in a country and the generation of mobile technology in a country. The US, long behind the rest of the world, crossed the 2+ messages per day per subscriber in 2007 and is estimated to cross 3+ messages per day per subscriber in 2008. The United States may have finally turned the corner. This being said, look at the multiple subscriptions in the US going up...
Posted by: Giff Gfroerer, i2SMS | May 12, 2008 at 07:19 PM
Be very careful. Multiple phones and multiple SIMs make you a terrorist.
Or so say the media ;)
http://www.metro.co.uk/news/article.html?in_article_id=105496&in_page_id=34
Posted by: Vero | June 03, 2008 at 10:04 PM
Yes, we have one of the posters from that campaign stuck on our Big Cupboard Of Phones at the office :)
Posted by: Tom Hume | June 04, 2008 at 08:48 AM