A group of 16 leading telecommunications and information technology companies, under the auspices of the GSM Association, is promoting mobile broadband in a marketing initiative worth more than $1 billion over the next year.
The companies--which include Vodafone, Microsoft, and Asustek--aim to make it simpler for consumers to
According to research commissioned by the GSMA and Microsoft, and carried out by Pyramid Research, there is demand for $50 billion worth of such notebooks this year.
"We definitely expect to see several hundred thousand in the shops by Christmastime," Mike O'Hara, the GSMA's chief marketing officer, told Reuters by telephone.
The group said the move also could pave the way to connect to the Internet from MP3 music players, refrigerators, and cars in the future.
The partners will label laptop computers that meet their standards for mobile broadband access with a new service mark that identifies laptops ready for mobile broadband connections "out of the box."
Many in the telecommunications and computer industries believe that most people in the world will have their first, and
"While there will always be a place for Wi-Fi connectivity, the great benefit of mobile broadband might be that it liberates the user from the spatial tyranny of the so-called hot spot," Shiv K. Bakhshi, director of mobility research at IT research firm IDC, said in a GSMA statement released on Tuesday.
The other partners in the initiative are 3, a unit Hutchison Whampoa; Dell; ECS; Ericsson; Gemalto; Lenovo; Orange, a unit of France Telecom; Qualcomm; Telefonica Europe; T-Mobile; and Toshiba.
