Today’s Wall Street Journal has an article about Hillary Clinton’s decision to use text messaging as part of her campaign. (It’s part of the fawning media coverage of Clinton — even though Obama and Edwards already made the decision to use text messaging, the Clinton move “signals” how “widespread” text messaging has become.) Forgive me, but my first reaction is “what comes next — the use of quill pens?”
Once again, the US has made some small steps to catching up with the rest of the world, which far outstrips the US in telephony innovation. The Philippines, for example, used text messaging not just in a political campaign but to run their entire revolution. By way of contrast, the Edwards campaign has been fiddling around with text messaging for months but has just 6,000 subscribers.
The US is a major innovator in many areas of technology and telecommunications, but cellular services still run far behind.
You're not wrong. The same thing is true for Canada - where mobile ownership is dwarfed by european counterparts.
Roughly (iirc) 60% of Canadian households have a mobile, whereas >95% of adults in the UK have them. It has a profound effect on the market for services and applications in the different regions.
Moshe, hello from Evanston.
Could you maybe write another entry about why this is? Does it relate to the concept of disaggregation?