Is the topic of this month's special report yet another evolution of technology, or the next big thing? Consider this: Mobile phones and mobile telephony, including voice and text messaging, are already big. Over 400 million mobile phones were sold worldwide in 2000. Ever-cheaper phones and new services may push total sales to 1 billion mobile phones per annum by 2002 and up to several billion by the year 2004. The numbers seem impossible until you learn that in the year 2000, 50 percent of all Nokia sales went to the replacement of other mobile phones. If one considers the $40-$100 per phone that telephone companies charge per month for phone service, you have a really big thing. Understandably, Internet companies hope to be a part of this, and phone companies view the Internet as a way to push their service billings toward the upper edge of the $40-$100 range; so we're hearing a lot about wireless Internet, supplied via mobile phones. But the answer of how and when the Internet becomes part of mobile communications is not straightforward.
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