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map[]In 2013 consumers in North America used an average of 1.3GB of data per month. In 2018 consumers are expected to be using 9GB of data per month, an 11-fold increase in usage over 5 years before. Consumers are increasingly using their mobile devices for more of their daily activities every year and unfortunately this increased data usage is not changing to reflect these usage patters. Consumers are constantly facing increasing costs for using their increasingly powerful devices to consume ever more rich content at an constantly increasing cost. map[]Every one who engages in a policy of selling products in any area of Canada at prices lower than those exacted by him elsewhere in Canada is guilty of an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding two years.
This is Section 50, paragraph 1(b), of the Canadian Competition Act (1985) which outlines what constitutes discriminatory pricing.
The pricing practices of all of the major wireless providers in Canada perpetuate a highly uncompetitive marketplace practices which fall squarely under the definition of discriminatory pricing as defined about in the Competition Act. map[]Blackberry’s first and only tablet, the Playbook has had a long and tough life. Launching before the release of the Blackberry 10 OS, the Playbook was orphaned from the start due to it’s lack of apps, compatibility, and software updates. While the Playbook itself is a sturdy and reliable tablet, the lack of a native BBM app was always a visible sign of it’s many issues.
With the launch of BB10 there was hope that a version of BBM could be ported over to the Playbook OS due to the platforms underlying similarities. map[]US consumers alone purchased $38.8 billion worth of goods using their mobile devices in 2013, a number which is only expected to rise. While consumers are eager to make payments with their mobile devices few of these purchases were processed through traditional payment terminals due to the lack of compatible infrastructure.
This lack of support is not because companies are uninterested. With profits growing every year everyone wants to get in on the huge potential of this market. map[]I have owned a Blackberry Z10 for nearly a month now and I can say without a shadow of a doubt the best phone I have ever owned is my Blackberry Z10. Having upgraded from my Blackberry Bold 9700 nearly two months ago I have found few flaws in my new phone (ignoring the issue of whether or not a hardware keyboard is necessary). With the Blackberry 10.2.1 update slated to be released this week, now is a good time to look at some of the issues and improvements I hope to see with this update. map[]On Monday September 23rd the CRTC released the list of companies that had put forward a deposit with the intention to bid in the upcoming 700 MHz spectrum auction. Unfortunately that list of companies is populated with only incumbent Canadian carriers and small regional players looking to pick up localized spectrum blocks, none of which will poster much diversity in the Canadian wireless market.
The problem is that Canadians are still being left with no real chance to break out of the current three-player system Canada is currently stuck with. map[]The announcement today of a $700 million bid for Wind Mobile by Verizon Wireless has caused quite the stir in the mobile Canadian mobile industry, and with the most visible indicators of the impact of this news being the stocks of ROBELUS dropping a staggering 9% in early trading today you can see not only the fragility of the mobile market but also the severity of this news.
Though this bid might cause a point of contention with nationalists, privacy advocates, and carriers alike (who will undoubtedly make a play about being it not being Canadian owned) the reality is that it is in all our best interests. map[]When you look at the current diversity in the smart phone market, statistics show, as you would expect, that Android is at the top, followed by iOS, then BB OS, then Windows Phone. When looking at the tablet market you get quite a different picture. With tablets, unlike phones, iOS is the predominant player with over 60% of the tablet market share.
Now one could attribute this discrepancy to the fundamental difference between the beginnings of the smart phone market compared to that of the tablet market. map[]My tablet, being the now-discontinued HP Touchpad, has had a port of Android for quite some time. What I didn’t know was that you could actually run other (abait mostly older OS’s within android). The following is a screenshot of me running mac OS 6 (system 6) in an emulator on my Touchpad. Unfortunately I was unable to get System 7 running, though apparently it was possible, which was a major improvement over 6 and would have brought a load of cool features to play with on my tablet.