Tag: mobile tech trends

Farmers and other people across the Pacific Island nation are using smartphones to purchase necessary supplies.

Despite the fact that almost two years have passed since Samoa was devastated by Cyclone Evan, the Pacific Island is still working to recover from the catastrophe, and mobile technology has been playing a vital role in this process.

During the worst of the storm, winds reached up to 105 miles per hour, whipping the sheets of rain.

The waves were 13 feet high and storm surges were driven by the powerfully gusting winds. The World Bank created a post-disaster needs assessment following the storm and it showed that it was the agricultural segment of the country that experienced the greatest devastation. Over 7,000 families on the country’s Upolu island lost their livestock, crops, and farming equipment. The loss of income continues to hurt the communities that were dependent on agriculture. Programs have been set in place to help to recover and many now include the use of e-vouchers and mobile technology.

Mobile technology has provided massive relief in a system that has been piloted by the government in Samoa.

The program is based on the use of mobile device technology. Affected families have been provided with e-vouchers that can be used as payments for the replacement of farming supplies. The system works by transferring funds directly to the smartphones of the farmers, which have a special chip enabled within them.

The system then allows those funds to be used for the purchase of over 5,000 specifically pre-approved “white listed” items that are sold from designated vendors. The items that have been authorized to be purchased by the farmers include building materials, as well as equipment for fishing and farming.

This represents the first time that the Pacific region has used this type of technology using mobile devices, and the practicality and cost effectiveness of the effort has been astounding. The risk of fraudulent use of the funds has been considerably reduced by linking the point-of-sale systems to the white listed products. Moreover, as it uses mobile technology, the electronic databases notably lower the need for paperwork. Those same databases also make it possible for improved and more reliable evaluation and monitoring of the program.

The AIMIA has now released its tenth annual index which has provided considerable insight into tech trends.

The Tenth Annual Australian Mobile Phone Lifestyle Index has now been released by the AIMIA, which has allowed the industry to gain a considerable amount of insight with regards to the preferences and behaviors of consumers in Australia with regards to mobile technology.

This year, they discovered that between smartphone and televisions, Australians prefer their cell phones.

In fact, among the respondents to this year’s study, 61 percent said that they would choose their mobile technology – specifically, their smartphone – over a television. That said, 70 percent still said that they preferred their cars. Moreover, when the respondents to this survey were offered the choice from among various types of tech, about 50 percent said that their preference was their smartphone, 34 percent still preferred their laptop or desktop, and 16 percent wanted their tablets.

The survey also looked into a range of different overall behaviors with respect to the use of mobile technology.

For example, about 30 percent of the respondents to the survey in Australia said that they brought their mobile devices to bed, where they would use them, and that they also watched television there. Another 39 percent said that they always used their smartphones while they were traveling on public transportation such as buses.

A surprising 34 percent of respondents had only a mobile phone as their telephone service and did not subscribe to a landline telephone.

When it came to shopping behaviors, the laptop and desktop continued to reign supreme, as 93 percent of PC owners had made a purchase over their computers. Comparatively, among tablet owners, 73 percent had made a purchase, and among smartphone owners, 58 percent had made a purchase over their devices.

Slightly more than one in three respondents stated that they did not wish to receive personalized ads on their mobile technology or computers. This is interesting as it is in direct opposition to the current trend that is growing with respect to the personalization of mobile marketing and advertising through the use of various kinds of messaging.