That venerable organization, UNCTAD, (who dat?, ed.) an offshoot of the UN claims that "Mobile phone users in developing nations now make up 58% of handset subscribers worldwide". And according to the ITU , mobile phone penetration rates are expected
to reach 50 percent by early this year with the three billion
subscription mark already passed some months ago.
Unsurprisingly, most of that growth is coming from emerging markets like Africa, which has come up with a growth rate of 50 percent in the last few years. The stars of the show, equally predictably, have been the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China) adding one billion new users between them last year.
Undoubtedly, the vast majority of the mobile phones being purchased are NOT of the Smart phone and qwerty keyboard variety. They are of the standard key pad alpha-numeric configuration used on billions of cell phones world wide.
As our unofficial anecdotal learning curve suggests, many new cell phone users will type-in random numbers into their browsers to test the wireless internet waters. These meanderings eventually lead subscribers to properly formatted internet sites designed to deliver information and services. As their efforts improve access over time, they will come to realize that inputting 42637.com leads to "games", 2428.com leads to "chat", 6397.com leads to "news", 32232665.com leads to Facebook etc. Companies delivering mobile content such as Worddial continue to see growing traffic from these developing countries.
This can only bode well for increased use of numeric domains.
Recent Comments