Journalists and technology writers are enamored with communications technology and tend to portray successful technologies as representing large scale trends. We are regularly presented with news stories and promotional materials about the rise of new technologies and about how their uses create social trend that are significantly altering society.
The release of the new iPhone was recently featured on network evening news, Blackberry has been heavily discussed because its use by Pres. Obama, and Twitter has been featured in numerous television and newspaper stories. The impression given by coverage is that anyone who doesn’t have an iPhone or Blackberry and anyone who doesn’t Twitter is out of touch with the mainstream and being left out of modern society.
These new means of communications offer interesting possibilities, but their consumption needs to be seen realistically. Blackberry, for example, has 14 million subscribers-- about 5 percent of all mobile phone users in the US. iPhones represents about 1 percent of mobile phone users. The number of Twitter users is currently around 1 million, representing only about 3 tenths of 1 percent of the US population.
Certainly those kinds of numbers can create businesses successes for their firms, but we have to be realistic in interpreting their overall impact on technology markets, social interaction, and diffusion of technologies. Not everyone wants to or will be equally wired, communicating, or sharing mundane details of their lives with their friends and the world. Some persons will find communications enabling technologies more rewarding in business and personal terms than other persons.
It is easy to forget the size of market when discussing the impact of diffusion of technologies. Without doing so, however, one gets a warped sense of their role in contemporary life.
Blog Archive
Popular Posts
-
The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case concerning vulgarity on the airwaves -- you know, Bono using the F-word in an unscripted br...
-
With the NCAA's March Madness annual collegiate basketball frenzy underway, I see too many parallels to the music media business to not ...
-
By Jerry Del Colliano There is a military term for a situation caused by too many inept officers -- clustering -- referring to the insignia ...
-
I was just blown away when I saw the front page of Inside Radio Friday in which they described the results of their special survey on voice...
-
All too often lately the major broadcast groups have been firing able and talented people to save money. Last week CBS pulled off a double f...
-
It's hard to fathom that a consumer electronic device that is both so cool and so hot may have finally peaked. In my work with college s...
-
Clear Channel went private yesterday at long last. Thomas H. Lee Partners and Bain Capital Partners are in charge now. They are investment ...
-
The introduction and suspension of media services is becoming a regular occurrence and the combined effects of multiple false starts is crea...
-
Sounds funny doesn’t it. Like a headline in a consumer publication. You know, where the reporter always ends the article with “stay tuned” ...
-
A Washington Post article says "Women who have historically wielded serious power of the purse as consumers are now buying all kinds o...