Today's Mobile Minute brings you coverage on Australia's record mobile web usage during the recent elections there, how telecom's price wars in Kenya have pushed down prices, why carriers may have raised the price of Google's Nexus One, a project Ugandan refugees using mobiles to find missing family, and competition for data-enabled handsets in Africa.
- Nielsen reports that the Australian elections, held in August, resulted in the a 19% jump in mobile web usage in Australia – and that news organizations were the main sites being accessed during that time.
- Bloomberg reports that Safaricom is joining the Kenyan SMS price war with lower SMS costs --"by as much as 94 percent." The downward costs of SMS was triggered last month by a reduction in so-called interconnect fees. The Communications Commission of Kenya reduced the rate of cross-carrier connects on Aug. 19.
- A TechCrunch piece investigates how Google's plan to sell the Nexus One in the U.S. for $99 unlocked was killed by cell service providers. The piece breaks down Google's goals for the phone, and why its dependancy on service providers led the company to back down from releasing a cheap, unlocked phone.
- A pilot project in Uganda that allows refugees to search for missing family and friends over mobiles gained 500 users within the first four days of its launch. We will be reporting more on this project. (via Textually)
- PC World reports that handset makers are competing to provide data-enable phones for the growing mobile web market in African. It notes, "...mobile operators are moving to upgrade their networks to 3G mobile Internet technology while others are upgrading to 4G networks in the next few months. Handsets manufacturers including Samsung, LG, Nokia, and Sony Ericsson are now scrambling for supply contracts of data enabled handsets in a bid to satisfy demand."
[Mobile Minute Disclaimer: The Mobile Minute is a quick round-up of interesting stories that have come across our RSS and Twitter feeds to keep you informed of the rapid pace of innovation. Read them and enjoy them, but know that we have not deeply investigated these news items. For more in-depth information about the ever-growing field of mobile tech for social change, check out our blog posts, white papers and research, how-tos, and case studies.]
Image courtesy Flickr user QiFei
Thanks to Dan Sinker for his contributions
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