Mobility Techzone Week in Review

In a week of what has otherwise been a slew of fairly low key announcements, we can pull up a couple of Motorola and Android nuggets. Let's start with Motorola Mobility/Google - which this week announced its new Moto G smartphone. It follows on the heels of the Moto X super smartphone, which, to hear some tell the story, has not sold in the sort of huge numbers Motorola and Google were hoping for. The word "super" certainly won't apply to the Moto G in terms of specifications and technical prowess - much of what makes the Moto X super is clearly missing from the new G. It's interesting to note that with all the hyped customizability of the MotoX (including a lot of TV air time about it) that it isn't selling well. Perhaps that new Nexus flagship is confusing people.

However, there is one thing that is super about the Moto G - its unlocked price of $179. There is a lot of smartphone to be had for it. Perhaps it will prove to be the Moto G that is the "super" phone among the new Motorola devices that will be available for purchase as the holiday buying season kicks in. It may even have significant implications for the global Internet. Go figure.

In some sense this global Internet possibility is no doubt tied to the fact that with the release of the latest Q3 2013 global mobile operating shipments reports becoming available, Android now apparently owns 80 percent of the entire smartphone market. Of course the low end of this market is where Android truly dominates and this is where the new Moto G will find its markets. The latest reports also show a surge in Window Phone 8 market share. Keep in mind of course that this surge is relative to WP8's original tiny share of the market - so it's all relative. But the gains are indisputable.

The other relationship we continue to find of ironic amusement is that Microsoft continues to collect royalties on the sale of most of those Android smartphones - whether high end or not. It is currently believed that Microsoft manages to bring about $2 billion in house on it. That is in fact quite a haul.

Ericsson this week released a new research report that puts some numbers to what we already know concerning smartphone growth. It will continue to be huge! Consider this - by 2019 there will be 5.6 billion smartphone subscribers. That represents a huge percentage of the global human population. It should certainly make Apple, Samsung, Google and Microsoft/Nokia happy.  If we use the numbers noted earlier for Android, we can certainly see how big Android will get. Apple however will no doubt continue to bring in the largest share of revenue - at least that is what we believe.

Speaking of mobile and wireless revenue, in the face of numerous Over the Top (OTT) vendors such as WhatsApp taking over the messaging world, a new report from Informa Telecoms & Media now finds that global carrier-based SMS revenue will drop significantly. Our guess is that most people have no idea just how large this market is in terms of dollars. Here are some numbers to consider: by 2018 SMS revenue will drop to $96.7 billion, down from $120 billion in 2013. That's right - $120 billion! No wonder the carriers are worried.

We'll wrap up this week with a tale of two different mobile market segments. The first is a tale of huge growth and a thriving market, with a new report from Strategy Analytics that claims the SMB market for SaaS-based mobility is booming. Well, the truth of the matter is that there is hardly any surprise here. It makes a great deal of sense for SMBs to use SaaS platforms to deliver on mobility - whether for apps, mobile device management or for BYOD security. It's the right way to go.

Here's something you may find surprising however - the market for mobility within the Fortune 500 is lagging relative to general and overall adoption. iMomentous has just released its 3rd annual Corporate Mobile Readiness Report and it claims that the Fortune 500 is not moving nearly fast enough to embrace enterprise mobility. This may actually be true. As much as the Fortune 500 pioneers and first adopters are moving at lightning speed to embrace mobile, there is a huge population of laggard large scale companies that are indeed failing to make the embrace. This is the sort of thing that ultimately leads to how the Fortune 500 changes over time as smaller companies begin to thrive and these laggards fall due to becoming uncompetitive at both strategic and tactical levels.

Have an awesome weekend!