Across the world throughout industrialised and developing countries young people, business people, elderly people and many other parts of society are using Mobile Phone technology to connect people, share information, ignite creativity and imagination

However its important to note that there are big differences in sub-groups of society in the extent of use, devices used and attitudes towards the spread of mobile technology and the mobile web.

The recently released report “The Mobile Difference” by The Pew Research Center points out some of these differences in the American context

For a sizable swath of the adult population, mobile and wired communication methods are, if not seamless parts of how people engage with digital content, approaching that status.

This places demands not only on wireless networks as people ask more of them, but also on wired networks for home access. Demand for access on one platform stimulates demand on the other – and vice versa.

39% of Americans have positive and improving attitudes about their mobile communication devices, which in turn draws them further into engagement with digital resources – on both wireless and wired platforms.

Mobile connectivity is now a powerful differentiator among technology users. Those who plug into the information and communications world while on-the-go are notably more active in many facets of digital life than those who use landlines, cable or other methods to access the internet.

• 16% of adults are active conduits of content and information for either fun or for personal productivity
• 8% of adults use mobile devices and broadband platforms for continual information exchange to collaborate with their social networks
• A clear message from looking across the range of groups is the association between youth and heavy and happy engagement with mobile technology. Among the groups designated as “motivated by mobility”, 70% of people in these groups are under the age of 30

Mobile access to the internet constitutes an inflection point in technology adoption.

This implication, on the one hand, is not a shocker. The Pew Internet Project, among others, has documented people’s growing reliance on mobile devices in recent years. The mobile phone went from the device that was the fourth “hardest to do without” in 2002 to the number one slot in 2007

The groups “motivated by mobility” are obviously heavy users of mobile devices and applications, but these uses don’t substitute for going online with a wired connection on a computer. Rather, these two types of access reinforce one another.

Whereas the ascent of broadband and the “always on” internet now has the “always connected” layer of mobile access, the way those “motivated by mobility” jointly use wired and wireless access suggests a new era for many users, where “continual information exchange” is the norm.

The implications of a significant portion of the population being involved in “continual information exchange” are at best only partially understood.

Certainly there has been plenty of discussion on the rise of participatory culture in the music and arts and the wearing away of boundaries between work and home.

In the realm of news, acolytes of “continual information exchange” may not buy many newspapers, but some of them may be sources of information critical to understanding day-to-day events. Whether this is a pillar of a new business model for the news media is unknown

As a large portion of the online population gravitates to wireless and mobile access to supplement their home high-speed connection, this increases the supply of and demand for online content.

Institutions – whether they are governments or news organizations – have greater incentives to optimize their services to be consumed online.

More people have greater opportunity to share their advice, creativity, and observations online.

This makes exclusion from the network of people and information found online more costly than in the past. The cost of exclusion rises exponentially as fewer people remain excluded.

Read more findings from the “The Mobile Difference” report by The Pew Research Center

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