Only scratched the surface

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The spread of mobile connectivity is generating major social and economic benefits around the world - the renowned economist Jeffrey Sachs has called mobile phones “the single most transformative tool for development”. The GSMA has four key predictions:

• Mobile broadband will break all growth records and mobile will be the world’s most frequently used connector to the internet. The growth of mobile broadband has vastly exceeded all expectations yet we are in the relatively early stages of this growth. 
• LTE will unite the wireless world even more than GSM.
• You will see an explosion of applications as the mobile ecosystem further gear up their apps productivity.
• M2M is finally poised to meet its potential. We are counting on M2M and what we call “embedded mobile” as the next wave of serious growth for the industry. More than four billion people are connected to mobile and we can see a world where radio chips populate all kinds of devices from homes to cars to medical equipment to smart meters - we have only scratched the surface.

Michael O’Hara is CMO of GSM Association

Next:  Low-cost 4G everywhere
Back to: The coming application store shakedown

2020 at a glance

• Telco of one
• 20 billion connected devices
• Augmented reality
• End-to-end fiber
• Smart enablers
• Content conflicts
• Dumb pipes rule OK
• RIP ARPU and MOU
• RIP pay-TV
• LTE thrives, Wimax survives
• Rethink in approach to generating revenue
• The coming application store shakedown
• Only scratched the surface
• Low-cost 4G everywhere
• Big pipe – bigger apps

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