A total of 155 countries reported more than 6 billion existing mobile user subscriptions in 2011, pretty close to the human population of the entire planet. From those, over 1 billion are estimated to be smartphones, so there is good chance that the gadget buzzing on your desktop is an iPhone, Android, Windows Phone, or Blackberry.

As landlines slowly fall into oblivion with the help of VOIP, mobile devices have become as much a commodity as a staple of our daily lives. They are contraptions almost required for “connecting people”, the (not so) old Nokia motto that effectively changed our way of communicating with each other. Users of mobile phones, smartphones, and tablets have turned into fan groups with serious allegiances. Some love them for their lavish design while others seek high computing-power and lightning fast data processing. Large high resolution screens, classical camera and video camera replacing built-ins, and full-layout keyboards are all part of the evolving choices. We even agree to tie ourselves to multi-year mortgages, just so we can clutch the soon to be outdated object of our desire.

The increasingly apparent general rule is that wherever there’s a trend, there’s money to be made out of it. During the recent Superbowl, maybe THE most televised sporting event in the world, not one but two multi-million phone commercials were featured. It wouldn’t be too daring to say that mobile is at the epicenter of all current, seismic technology trends.

However, does opportunity exist for the localization industry in the world of mobile? Localization, a very competitive industry that has LSPs (of all sizes) constantly looking for new revenue sources and increased efficiency. Nonetheless, the way money is traditionally made in translation is through words; the more words – the bigger the deal. And even when using all of our “thinking-out-of-box” abilities to navigate to new opportunities, we find ourselves still fighting the strong foundational currents of the crimson sea of “price per word”. More.

See: GALA Blog

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