Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies

http://con.sagepub.com Editorial: Mobile Phones

Janey Gordon Convergence 2005; 11; 5 DOI: 10.1177/135485650501100201 The online version of this article can be found at: http://con.sagepub.com

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Editorial
Mobile Phones

So

mobite o what is special about mobile phones? The speciat

We have taken to them in
a

answer is, we like them! <s, that was not fully anticipated both in the way alacrity of our take up and the way we use them. WhatI am hoping to provide in this special issue of Convergence about mobile phones, is a snapshot of where we stand now in terms of research and debate. One of the fascinating things for me about mobile phones is that the industry hype and talk up has frequently been exceeded by the reality. For example, whenI started researching mobile phones three years ago, it was estimated by the industry that by 2006 there would be a global usage of 25 per cent, but in 2005 this is already the case. There are now 1.52 billion mobile phone users globally.2 The developed countries clearly skew this figure, but the markets in simple handset ownership in these countries has slowed and is maturing, the penetration of handsets is over 90 per cent amongst some sectors of the population, particularly young adults. In the UK 79 per cent of all adults subscribe or use mobile phones, although there is about one handset per person. This is because, as in some other European countries, users may have more than one phone.3 The greatest areas of growth in the market are in the developing countries of Africa where usage has more than doubled in the past 12 months (although this is still only 6 per cent of the population)4 and also in China, where 25 per cent of the population now use mobiles.5

mobile market that has been consumer led the short message service or text. The text message was originally given away as an additional service but now accounts for a high amount of the mobile traffic. In the UK we now send 69 million texts a day, more than one a day per head of population,.6 However, in the Philippines they send more than six a day per head of their population, over 500 million per day.7 This is in a country with only a 20 per cent handset penetration. With the introduction of 3G phones, it is also becoming commonplace to use the mobile phone for data - either to be kept informed by a provider or by the user finding it for themselves on the internet. Website providers are rendering their pages for mobile One
in its use,
was access.

particular aspect of the

To help brief myself as the editor of this special issue of Convergence, I attended two very different conferences, one academic conference at the University of Surrey and one industry conference in Londons Excel. This proved extremely helpful in giving an overview of the occasionally
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polarised ways of thinking. Clearly the mobile communications market is extremely valuable and one which the industry wishes to guide as1
8 discovered at the Mobile Content World Conierence.8

Industry
concerns

For the industry, the best thing about telecommunications is that the user by and large provides their own content. We speak to each other or text each other and all the provider has to do is give us a network, with which we can do this. However, this can also be viewed as problematic. The industry is very keen to lead our development of usage in mobile technologies. They are trying hard for example to encourage us to use
or media message services, to send frivolous picture messages to each other. This has not taken off so far but is growing. In October 2004, the UK regulator, Ofcom, reported that MMS usage had doubled in the UK although remained a very small proportion of messages.9 We still text each other and call each other and say things like, Where are you? Im just walking up the path. We are very savvy as to how to use the services economically. Young people in particular will have one hand set and several sim cards that each provide free or inexpensive time and they swap them around.

MMS

One area that has proved successful for providers and customers is Location Services. If you are carrying a mobile phone that is switched on, your mobile provider knows pretty much where you are. This has been converted into a really useful way of companies keeping track of their staff and if the staff are delivering goods or services then this service can be extended to include tracking of these products.
In the USA, phones are obliged to include an E911 device, which can emergency services the ability to find the mobile handset if an emergency call is made from it. Of course this does not necessarily mean they find the person. Other services, however, may not be regarded so positively. For instance, you could receive a text as you pass a shop that has your

give

number in order to advertise their products. There is a great deal of debate about these services and not surprisingly some unease.10

industry is also concerned about what may be called cultural products. The issue being debated is the introduction of DRM, Digital Rights Management. There is a great fear that the industry was not proactive in the development of the internet until users had got used to working out how they were going to exploit it themselves. According to Ted Cohen from EMI Music: In the Internet we waited to get it right and missed it. IThe music industry suffered as they had not anticipated or been proactive in the growth of music downloading as a method of distribution and of purchase. Napster, the software that allowed internet
The
users

to

companies,

share music collections without reference to the music was a severe wake up call.

The mobile industries are keen to use the technology to provide cultural artefacts and for us to pay for this service. For example, the copyrights and sales of ringtones are now globally equal to 10 per cent of the total music market.2 This has happened in just a couple of years. In particular
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the development of polyphonic ringtones has influenced this growth. Images used as wallpaper on mobile phone screens must also be purchased. Homer Simpson is a copyrighted image, if you want his picture on your phone - and many people do - you will pay for that

Another developing market is that of the downloading to a of video clips, films and full music tracks. Not only can we download clips of, say, a football goal, but short films are being made for the mobile.I attended the Worlds Smallest Film Festival at Excel, showing animations produced specifically for mobile phone screens. Whole music tracks may also be down loaded as MP3 files on to a handset and shortly downloads will apparently include whole feature films. If you do not wish to watch a film on a screen approximately 3 cms by 2 cms, or listen to music on a phone headset, more realistically you can download again onto a computer and burn a CD or DVD so that you can take the music or film away, and use it elsewhere.

right. mobile phone

Why would
computer

you want to do this on your mobile phone and not your in the first place? If you are a European teenager or young adult, you may not have your own computer, but you almost certainly have your own phone. Twice as many people in the world have access to a mobile phone as have access to the internet.13 For academics the whole area of distribution and distribution rights and management is suddenly up in the air. Very small companies can distribute cultural

easily than using the internet. Furthermore, if you own a mobile phone you have a convenient e-wallet. A music track downloaded on to your mobile phone is charged to your phone bill. You pay for it at the end of the month. However, in the UK, more than half of mobile phone users use prepaid phones. In Italy this rises to about 90 per cent, but in many other countries this is less common - for example, in Japan, where there was an attempt to ban prepaid mobiles as criminals could use them anonymously. On a prepaid mobile phone, you are effectively using your phone as a bank. You put money in and spend it, as you need to, on calls or downloads. In fact regulatory bodies have to address this, as a whole set of banking regulations apply. A mobile phone may also be an e-shopping mall and this is where the various providers are attempting to take control and be organised. It is suggested that the mobile mall needs anchor stores that people use regularly, such as a newsagent, as well as specialist stores for individuals and also what is called daily life providers, such as buying a bus ticket.14 This service is being tested in several areas, for example in Frankfurt in Germany,. In order to buy a bus ticket, you send a text and

products around

the world

even more

receive

ticket back to show the driver.

biggest headache for the industry in terms of cultural products is agreeing to share the protocols and software to let the customer access them. The Swiss company, SDC, is a music store on your mobile phone. They provide a music download service and they have to find ways of making this provision to a host of different handsets. It is like buying a CD and having to say that you have Samsung CD player, which is
The
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different to Sony or Phillips etc. Michael Bornhausser the CEO, felt that a lack of shared software between the companies was the biggest problem
in

development at present.s

Academic As the guest editor of this issue of Convergence, I find it interesting that concerns mobile phones have developed an academic interest at all. There was very little academic interest in the cultural perspectives of fixed line telephony. The telephone was assumed to be a household utility, much like a washing machine or vacuum cleaner. It was studied for its linguistic use by writers such as Schegloff16 and later by writers such as Hills for its democratic implications.&dquo;. But it is clear that mobile phone usage carries consequences that are worth exploring and flagging for research, discussion and debate.
a great deal of information and data available. who is using mobile phones? This is relatively easy to chart. For example, Mostly the mobile phone companies know who they provide services to. They can count their users. In fact they frequently know their users names, addresses and of course, phone numbers, although not all this is readily accessible to a researcher.

For academics there is

However, mobile phones are very mobile and they are sold on, stolen and used by a range of people of whom the provider may be unaware. Crimes involving mobile phones are worth further academic study. In particular the various forms of simple theft - of handsets, of copyrighted material and of spectrum time in terms of phones being used for free. In fact the illicit use of mobile phones seems under investigated.
A second area of scholarly interest is how mobile phones are being used. In particular, how have we as a society responded to being in perpetual contact Do we regard it as generally positive or generally negative? Increasingly it is the norm to be contactable, those without phones are regarded as eccentric. In 2004 global mobile usage overtook fixed line usage: 1.5 billion mobiles to 1.2 billion fixed lines.9

The Surrey conference was called The Life of Mobile Data2 and was particularly focused on what happened to all the data that the mobile companies collect and know about us. And they know a lot. There was much discussion over privacy and what constitutes privacy and what aspects of ourselves we consider to be private. David Lyon from Queens University, Canada, began by thinking about applying some of the language of harm (physical and monetary) and hurt (emotional) to privacy. He spoke about the notion of personality rights, which are enshrined in Canadian law by the Napoleonic code as a way of examining what we lose when another party, such as a mobile phone provider, knows a great deal about us and can use and sell that information. What have we as an individual lost by that transaction? Did we give this away or was it stolen? He was concerned that the mobile providers are not subject to ethical scrutiny or democratic involvement.&dquo; The second keynote address was from Professor Charles Raab from the University of Edinburgh, who also looked at issues of privacy but this time from the standpoint of the law. He believes that we are prepared to give
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9
personal data and should be much more cautious. He asked if we should view the collection of IT data ~sofe~ until proven dangerous or vice a versa. He suggested that we apply a Privacy impact Assessment on data collection. 22
was followed by David Birch, who is not an academic but an IT consultant. He suggested that property rights are considered more important than privacy, because they are more easily priced and that once privacy is viewed as being owned it becomes more valuable. Birch felt that we need to be much more aware of what we are giving away that somebody else is going to regard as a saleable product.23

away too much

He

Privacy relates strongly to matters of civil liberties. A recent article in Janes, the information and publishing group, gave the example of the use of mobile phones to gain criminal evidence: It has been estimated that 70 per cent of Britains population have at some time given their details, including phone numbers, to credit
in this respect, criminals are no different to the rest of the population. They may think that a mobile number cannot be traced to them, but if they have used that number in any other application, or it is on any other database, it can be matched up using the same software deployed by credit agencies and market research consultants to gain access to specific customer groups.

companies and,

The new link between mobile phones and other databases will mean that detectives will also be able to use techniques normally reserved for complex fraud investigations. For example, forensic data mining is a process that combines large computer databases, neural networks and an analysis of the links between apparently random bits of information. 24 There have been a number of cases where mobile phones have been used to provide criminal evidence - for example in a recent murder case in Britain the location of one of the defendants at the time of the crime was traced using her mobile phone.25
We may feel that using mobile data in this way, to convict
trace
a as

victim, observed:
a

is

generally beneficial

to

society. However,

murderer or David Lyon

While this is not in principle ubiquitous, inevitable or oppressive, some aspects of mobile surveillance require careful consideration from analytical, ethical and political perspectives ... The key opportunity for engaging in these questions is while the technologies are being stabilised.26
a positive note, I would argue that a new and enhanced public sphere might be developed by the use of mobile technology. There have been instances of the phone being used to circumvent oppressive or intimidating situations. A well-documented example is the overthrow of President Estrada in the Philippines, when the text message was used to provide a quick way of passing on information and rallying support amongst the population. 27

On

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10

Debates end I am pleased that our call for papers attracted a wide range of research articles interests, which reflect many of the themes that have been identified
above. Three of our articles are examining mobile phone usage by studying small samples of distinct groups, in differing circumstances. Enrico Menduni has conducted research amongst a group of politicians, their personal assistants and political journalists to try and pin down exactly how the mobile phone might influence the political sphere of discourse in a very practical and pragmatic way, Does this have an impact on the public sphere as well? Peter and Naomi White, on the other hand are looking at a very ordinary use of the mobile phone. How do travellers, far from home and family use telephony to stay in touch and what is the purpose of this? This piece describes a homely and poignant use of the mobile phone and tries to assess why we may use the mobile as opposed to the fixed line phone.

Dylan Tutts article gives a detailed case study of a series of mobile phone calls made by a teenage boy, living in the English countryside, early one evening. The boy is setting up his evenings socialising and we hear how he does this and view his actions as he uses his mobile phone. Tutt is particularly interested in the use of the phone in an entirely domestic setting and how the boy uses the phone to negotiate and juggle his conflicting restraints and freedoms. In a previous paper I have argued that mobile phones have rapidly became part of our popular culture. 28 We have adopted its technology and personalised it and made it our own. Three of this issues Debates
pieces examine this further. Drew Hemment looks for the essential

qualities of the mobile phone. He is most interested in the attribute of its very mobility and compares it to the Walkman. Hemment discusses
locomotive arts and functions and notes the inventive ways that we are using the technology. John Farnsworth and Terry Austrin point to two other qualities that are fundamental to mobile telephony. It is, in the first instant, a sound technology and secondly it is a hybrid ensemble of other technologies, which already existed and came together in the mobile phone. Larissa Hjorth and Heewon Kim look at exactly how mobile phones are being customised by young Koreans, in their piece concerning the gendered personalising of mobile phones in Seoul. They point out the way that the new technology is being used to reflect older Korean traditions, such as that of Chon.
Our two other Debates pieces are looking at the development of the mobile phone industry and culture. Noah Arceneaux charts the take up of the mobile phone in the USA by looking at how it was reported by the press. One of the most striking things about the US case is that the penetration is much lower there than in other developed countries. Arceneauxs piece gives us some indicators as to why this may have happened. Jonothan Lille takes a sharp look at the mobile industry and suggests that not all the latest developments are actually beneficial to the users. He deconstructs some promotional material to show that we should be alert as to whether mobile communications are connecting us
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11
to each other
or to more sinister systems of regulation, surveillance and a marketplace of commodities. Our final article is by Gordon Gow who expands on the privacy theme of the Surrey conference. He explores the locative capabilities of the mobile phone and considers under what circumstances a provider should make this available. In particular, what are the rights of the prepaid mobile phone user. We conclude with reviews of two books that directly and indirectly seek to unpack the phenomena of mobile communication technologies. Both our reviewers note that these books are for a wide readership, which reflects the current interest in the topic. Haddon provides an overview of research in the arena of ICT and Levinson gives a history of the mobile phone in the USA. As the guest editor of this special issue of Convergence, I have been keen to include a wide array of material from differing academic backgrounds. I hope that this issue will serve not only to indicate the range of study concerning mobile communication, but also through the

articles and citations act

as a resource

for other researchers.

In conclusion I would like to stress the importance of this small piece of

technology.I feel
just realising. It
and
so

that

as

academics interested in
a

communications, the mobile phone is of

technology, culture and significance that we are only

is quietly and without fuss causing us to carry it about be locatable and able to communicate in places hitherto unimaginable. It has forced societies to rethink laws and social mores and it has influenced our cultural forms and their distribution.

Janey Gordon

Notes

1.

We have used the term mobile phone throughout the issue, except where a synonym such as cellphone is used in a quotation. It was felt this stressed the portable nature of the technology. We also opted to use the term prepaid to describe a mobile phone where the user paid the provider before its operation.

2.

http://www.cellular.co.za/stats/stats-main.htm (accessed
Population statistics have been obtained from http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm (accessed
2

27 December 2004).

January 2005).

3. 4. 5.

http://www.ofcom.org.uk/research/industry_market_research/m_i_index/cm/
qu_10_2004/cm_qu_10_2004.pdf (accessed 27 December 2004). http://www.cellular.co.za/stats/stats-africa.htm (accessed 27 December 2004). http://www.cellular.co.za/news_2004/sep/090504-mobile_subscriber_growth_ drops_i.htm (accessed 27 December 2004).

6.
7. 8. 9.

http://www.cellular.co.za/news_2004/may/0500404-uk_sms_traffic_ continues_
to_rise.htm (accessed 27 December 2004). http://www.cellular.co.za/stats-main.htm (accessed 26 February 2004). Mobile Content World Conference, London Excel, 22 September 2004.

http://www.ofcom.org.uk/research/industry_market_research/m_i_index/cm/
qu_10_2004/?a=87101 (accessed
29 December 2004).

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12
10.

Declan

McCullagh, Cellphones betray your every move, CNET News (13 August 2003), at http://comment.zdnet.co.uk/declanmccullagh/0,39020670,39115796,00.htm (accessed 29 December 2004).
Ted Cohen,

11. 12. 13.

Excel,

22

Applying DRM to mobile content, Mobile Content World, London September 2004.

http://cellular.co.za/news_2004/may/050104-mobile_content_shows_rev enue_pro.htm (accessed 29 December 2004). hffp://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm (accessed 24 February 2005).

Mark de Jong, Keynote Address: How the convergence of media and entertainment are shaping the mobile economy, Mobile Content World, London Excel, 22 September 2004. Michael Bornhausser, in London.
E. J.
an

14.

15.

interview conducted

on

22

September 2004,

16. 17. 18.

19.

Perpetual
This
note

Schrgloff, Beginnings in the Telephone, in J.E. Katz and M. Aakhus (eds), Contact (Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 284-300. Hills, The Democracy Gap (Greenwood, 1991).
term is

taken from the title of James E. Katz and Mark Aakhus book. See 16 above.

20.
21.

http://www.cellular.co.za/news_2004/dec/121404-mobile_phone_sales_to_ beat_fixed.htm (accessed 24 February 2005). The Life of Mobile Data: Technology, Mobility and Data Subjectivity, 15-16 April 2004, University of Surrey, England. David Lyon, Why where you are matters: mundane mobilities, transparent technologies and the recording of time-space paths. Keynote address delivered to conference on The Life of Mobile Data: Technology, Mobility and Data Subjectivity, 15-16 April 2004, University of Surrey, England.
Charles Raab, Keynote address delivered to conference on The Life of Mobile Data: Technology, Mobility and Data Subjectivity, 15-16 April 2004, University of Surrey, England. David Birch, Managing the Data Trail, paper delivered to conference on The Life of Mobile Data: Technology, Mobility and Data Subjectivity, 15-16 April 2004, University of Surrey, England.

22.

23.

24

s, Jane Forensic telecoms revolution is turning mobile phones against their criminal owners (1 October 2004), at

25.

http://www.janes.com/press/pc041_001_1.shtml (accessed 29 December 2004). Crucial phone evidence in Soham murder case, http://archves.tcm.ie/breakingnews/2003/11/05/story12021 9.asp (accessed
18 March

2005).

26.

27.

David Lyon, Why where you are matters: mundane mobilities, transparent technologies and the recording of time-space paths. Keynote address delivered to conference on The Life of Mobile Data: Technology, Mobility and Data Subjectivity, 15-16 April 2004, University of Surrey, England. Janey Gordon, The Mobile Phone, an artefact of popular culture and a tool of the public sphere, Convergence, 8, no. 3 (Autumn 2002), pp. 15-26.

98.

Gordon, The Mobile Phone.

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