Smart phones overtake basic mobile phones in Europe

Smart phones overtake basic mobile phones in Europe

The Guardian newspaper, thursday 8/9/11,  reported "New data released by research company IDC show smartphone shipments up 48% compared to the same period in 2010, reaching nearly 22m, as Samsung, Apple, HTC and BlackBerry maker RIM dominated the market and Finland's Nokia saw its previous dominance wiped out. Last year smartphones made up just over a third of mobile phone sales in the region."

However, alternative research from IMS suggests that, infact, there is a SIM card sales explosion: "Of the 4.2 billion SIMs sold in 2010, 85% were to existing SIM card users, i.e. existing users of cellular handsets. This means that more than 80% of SIM-based cell phone users replaced their SIM cards last year. This may seem a little surprising as the proportion of cell phone users that replaced their actual handsets last year was much less than this. In fact at a global level, only 24% of cell phone users replaced their handsets with brand new handsets last year."

Moreover, IMS research further suggests when dealing with 4FF embedded SIMs: "With the current removable model, the volume of SIM cards sold in 2016 is set to pass 6 billion. If all cards were embedded by this time the number would be nearer 2 billion, around half what it was last year! As the SIM card market represents more than 80% of smart card volumes, this would be very bad news for many card and semiconductor suppliers."

On the basis of both reports the news in quite uplifting and a useful indicator of growth. At a time when the Prime Minister, David Cameron, looks to re-assess economic imbalance (services -v- manufacturing) in Britian, the elements to bring about the stimulus for wealth-creation, productivity and employment maybe here. Why would that be so? Because here is an area where services and manufacturing are required to forge a union in order that both can co-exist, such that they work not only in practice but in principle, too.

I am happy to revisit the sub-text of my 1988 proposal 'Putting Britain First' and reference to other reading materials if it would help put meat on the bones of this one.

Cyber What?

Cyber What?

We had a short discussion recently about "cyber" labels and their meanings. The wave that has been engulfing society for the last decade, driven by Psychology "with everything" NNNOOOOWWWW!!!!  and the use of 'label-ism' phenomenon to influence us that we need/must have/do something, is now causing much confusion. 

Cybering was discussed, done and dusted, in the late 1990s early 2000, thus cybering has not just occurred as a new phenomenon. Label-ism, in the case of cybering, isn't helping its cause either when announcing cyber threats to the UK or the World (for that matter) where mistakes in the use of definitions are publicly announced. It wont help the security services to do their job - protect the Realm - if society doesn't understand what the heck is discussed.  There must be a drive from top Government (David Cameron top table people) to make a substantive effort to clarify label-ism when discussing publicly threats we are led to believe are imminent.

Discussing cyber defintions with Simon "Si" Biles, the security specialist at Thinking-Security dot com, he offered these descriptions assigned to their labels identifying possible security threats that might be engineered from within cyber space:

"There seems to have been a general mixing of the terms : cyber-warfare, cyber-terrorism & cyber-crime : the news, as is oft the way with things they don't/can't/won't understand, interchanges them without consideration.

"cyber-crime is no better or worse than it has ever been, phishing, cracking etc. are much the same as allways - there are highs and lows, but nothing particularly extreme. Of course these figures are allways exagerated by the number of crimes that are committed that have a computer used in their research/planning/excecution - but this isn't cyber-crime anymore than stealing a knife is "knife crime".

"cyber-terrorism, to take the traditional use of the word "terrorism" ( or arguably "freedom fighting" depending on where you are standing ) is the "guerrilla warfare" of the computer world - denial of service, defacements etc. For example the "Anonymous" attacks on the Copyright crowd. Where this "terrorism" impacts on the general public is few and far between - a denial of service against a particularly greedy bank might impact on a few, but in real terms, this doesn't, and is unlikely to, create problems on the scale or magnitude of a traditional terrorist attack. And again, this has been going on, much of a muchness for sometime - highs and lows - usually associated with world events - but predominantly from individuals or insignificant groups.

"cyber-warfare is a bit different, and, really hasn't been seen except in Georgia - and even then, although that was suspected to be from Russia, that was never really proved - it could as well have been from a reasonable size hacker group just stretching in a country where there was little chance of prosecution or repercussion. I guess what Greg is suggesting above is probably the worst case scenario where the internet is compromised in some way that means that businesses can't communicate funds transfers - e.g. PoS - in reality though, as "the internet" is built on a wide variety of technologies ( from many and varied manufacturers ) and is designed to be resilient in the case of nuclear war ( or not ... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arpanet#The_ARPANET_under_nuclear_attack ) the chances of "taking out the internet" for a given country are fairly limited in a cyber-warfare scenario. Infact you'd stand a better chance of taking out the internet in the UK with some more traditional arson against certain backbone sites ...

"It is this, final, threat that is both having it's bandwaggon jumped on and is being blown out of proportion. Like most things - it's exciting, so it gets a lot of press - you are more likely to be burgled, have your car stolen, be involved in a hit & run or have your pocket picked than you are to be a victim of cyber-crime. Even Identity Theft ( which is portrayed as cyber-crime) is considerably easier to achieve through a dust-bin sift than a computer. Cyber-terrorism ? I'd be delighted to sell "cyber-terrorism" insurance to anyone who wants it ! "

The term 'Cyber' has been discussed above in context with types of threats that could be generated using it. The discussions above do not rule out or suggest that cyber is or could be put to good use too.

Mobile Phone outsourcing goes insourcing pt2

Do you remember back in March I wrote the piece about "Mobile Phone outsourcing goes insourcing" ( http://trewmte.blogspot.com/2010/03/mobile-phone-outsourcing-goes.html ), well yesterday I was given a link to Kent Police website and to the webpage dealing with public meeting notes:

http://www.kentpoliceauthority.gov.uk/public-meetings/audit-governance-committee/23-september-2009?p=2

Download and have a look at the report (link and heading as at Kent Police Website):

Item 19 Mobile Telephony Ananlysis

That is one heck of alot of money either way it is looked at for just one micro-section alone that overweights the scales on one side for public funds and yet when working as defence experts we have been systematically starved and drip fed minimal funding for the last 5 years. It could be quite laughable really (because the scales of justice are shown as balanced) if the times we are in weren't so dire. We will just have to wait and see how the new Government handles the way forward.

UK MTEB Mobile Forensics Conference 2010

UK MTEB Mobile Forensics

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Conference - September 2010

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Conference Centre - TBA

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Practitioners - Exhibition - Business

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Britain is a World leader in GSM and 3G mobile telephones, forensics, examination and evidence; GB remains the international centre for commerce, business and manufacturing, designers, software & programming and technology services. Forensics should be Stock Exchange commodity for the future.

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On the strength of Britain's position we hosted the first UK MTEB Mobile Forensics Conference on the 25th and 26th November 2009 and following the success of that conference there is to be a second Conference in September 2010.

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Grow your mobile and telecommunication business, manufacturing and forensic services in GB plc.