Increasing Mobility

Description:

The dictionary definition is a good start.

Mobile

-adjective

• Capable of moving or of being moved readily from place to place.
• Tending to travel and relocate frequently.

Mobility

1. the quality of being mobile.
2. Sociology. the movement of people in a population, as from place to place, from job to job, or from one social class or level to another.

The world population is increasingly more mobile and is more capable and willing to move from one place to another, both temporarily and permanently. This has been driven by falling transportation prices - particularly airline travel - and the expansion of corporations globally. Technology is also a driving force as it becomes possible to remain in contact with employees almost anywhere on the globe. The use of laptop computers over desktop computers is becoming commonplace in order to facilitate the flexibility required for a mobile workforce. Workforce mobility is more prevalent in the developed than in the developing world.

Mobility can also refer to population migration. In the developing world the rural population is migrating towards to cities in order to find work, putting strain on resources and infrastructure.

Enablers:

• Virtual Integration
• Media Globalization
• The Globalization of Culture (or Cultural Globalization)
• The advances of information and communication technology, especially wireless Technolgy, which free people from restraints of their location, you can communicate anywhere anyway.
• The advances in ground and air transportation. It allows people to travel around the world with safty, comfort and speed.
• Increasing international Cooperation, which requires people to travel around the world for cooperated projects/researches.
• World's rapid urbanization and motorization.

Inhibitors:

• Cultural barriers
• Language barriers
• Country barriers

Paradigms:

The emerging Air companys' all sorts of marketing programs aimed 'Frequent Travelers' is a very good example. Nowadays, there are people who travel so much that merely gaining milage services cannot satisfy them, and they bring so much profit for the air companys that they try all means to retain this group of travelers their roylty. Some even come up with special class which provide personal services above First Class!

Timing:

• On March 10, 1876, in Boston, Massachusetts, Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone.
• By the end of 1896,Henry Ford had sold his first car.
• Commercial air transportation began in 1914 when the St. Petersburg-Tampa Air Boat Line briefly carried the first scheduled paying passengers across Tampa Bay, Florida. Since that time, the airliner has revolutionized the way people travel, greatly reducing travel time between countries and bringing the world closer together.
• The boeing 747, the first of the wide-bodied commercial jets, had its inaugural flight in 1970. Four jet engines propel the plane, which reaches cruising speeds of 885 km/hr (550 mph), and later became the premier transcontinental jet in the world in the late 1970s and seated as many as 490 passengers.
• 1987 GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) standard for Europe created based on a hybrid of FDMA (analogue) and TDMA (digital) technologies.
• Vehicle ownership per 1000 population by 1999
• Mobile phones have been the most successful electronic product of all time with over 264 million handsets shipped in 1999 a number that’s predicted to increase threefold by 2004
• On December 2004, new world car speed record is top speed at 395+ km/h.

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