Subscribe free to our newsletters via your
. Space Industry and Business News .




TECH SPACE
Afghan women learn literacy through mobile phones
by Staff Writers
Kabul (AFP) Nov 14, 2012


Apple and Samsung rule smartphone market: study
San Francisco (AFP) Nov 14, 2012 - Industry trackers crowned Apple and Samsung global smartphone market kings on Wednesday, saying they accounted for nearly half of handsets sold in the third quarter of the year.

Smartphone sales climbed 46.9 percent to 169.2 million units from the same quarter last year as buyers increasingly opted for Internet-linked devices instead of "feature phones."

The smartphone market was "dominated" by Samsung and Apple, "leaving a handful of vendors fighting over a distant third spot," Gartner principal research analyst Anshul Gupta said in written findings accompanying a report.

South Korean consumer electronics giant Samsung sold 55 million smartphones in the recently-ended quarter and commanded 32.5 percent of the global market, "widening the gap with Apple," according to Gartner.

Apple sold 23.6 million iPhones in the third quarter in a 36.2 percent increase from the same period last year, Gartner reported.

The company was on track for strong iPhone sales in the holiday season with the newest version of the smartphone rolling out in China and other parts of the world, according to Gupta.

The Google-backed Android operating software used by Samsung and other smartphone makers continued to gain ground in the quarter, increasing its market share by 19.9 percent to claim 72.4 percent of the market.

California-based Apple's moible gadget software powered 13.9 percent of the smartphones sold in the third quarter.

Overall mobile phone sales declined 3.1 percent to slightly less than 428 million units in the quarter.

"After two consecutive quarter of decline in mobile phone sales, demand has improved in both mature and emerging markets as sales increased sequentially," Gupta said.

"In mature markets, we finally saw replacement sales pick up with the launch of new devices in the quarter."

While Gartner analysts expected mobile phone sales to be buoyed in the year-end holiday shopping season, they cautioned that the boost might be tempered by gift-buyers opting for tablet computers.

Afghanistan has launched a new literacy programme that enables Afghan women deprived of a basic education during decades of war to learn to read and write using a mobile phone.

The phone is called Ustad Mobile (Mobile Teacher) and provides national curriculum courses in both national languages, Dari and Pashto, as well as mathematics.

All the lessons are audio-video, with writing, pronunciation and phrases installed in Ustad Mobile phones -- and they are distributed free to students.

Sat on a carpet in a small Kabul classroom with a handful of women learning to read and write, 18-year-old Muzhgan Nazari said the Taliban, who banned schooling for girls during their rule, were in power when she should have started her education.

"I could not go to school because the Taliban took control of Kabul city", she told AFP, adding that her father had also opposed his daughters attending school.

"Since I heard about this literacy training centre for women, I convinced my father and he allowed me to attend on a daily basis," she said.

Nazari is delighted with the programme, which is being rolled out by a commercial provider and the ministry of education with financial backing from the United States.

The Mobile Teacher software was developed by Paiwastoon, an Afghan IT company, with $80,000 dollars in US aid and is designed to tackle one of the worst illiteracy rates in the world by riding the growing wave of mobile phone use.

Despite millions of girls now attending school, Afghanistan's literacy rate among women remains at just 12.5 percent, compared to 39.3 percent for Afghan men, according to United Nations figures.

"This is the first time audio-visual literacy learners have the chance to receive lessons on their cellphones," Mike Dawson, CEO of Paiwastoon, told AFP.

The company has experience in the field, having previously managed the "One Laptop Per Child" programme that handed out 3,000 computers to women and children in Kabul, Kandahar, Herat, Baghlan and Jalalabad.

"We can make the job of the teachers easier by using the video and the audio and the questions and exercises," Dawson said.

"Cellphones are cheaper than any computer and people are familiar with it. And also, the maintenance is much easier."

The free app can be installed on all mobile phones with a memory card slot and a camera. Individual lessons, which will also be made available on the ministry of education website, will teach new words and phrases.

"We try to get to as many people as possible. The other thing, we can add more subjects like English, Arabic, Pashtu, health, agriculture," Dawson added.

"For rolling out Ustad Mobile -- we are looking to talk with the phone companies and the media to make people aware of the programme.

"We interviewed phone shop owners about the software and they are willing to install it for people like they install other software on mobiles," Dawson said.

"People don't realise how powerful these phones are, they work like computers."

At the moment, some 100 students are using the Mobile Teacher in a pilot project in Kabul, 65 percent of them women, with plans to roll the project out across the country, the education ministry said.

"Our focus and target is mostly on uneducated women," said director of programmes, Allah Baz Jam.

The ministry would do everything it could to promote the Ustad Mobile for women and would also distribute the software on CDs and DVDs, he told AFP.

At the pilot project class in Kabul, Samira Ahmadzai, a 24 year-old mother of two, wearing an all-enveloping burqa also said she had been unable to attend school because of the Taliban.

"And later, I got married. Now with the permission of my husband, I've come to the literacy centre to learn to read and write."

The Taliban were ousted by a US-led invasion in 2001, and have since waged an insurgency against the Western-backed government of President Karzai.

Today, of Afghanistan's 8.4 million schoolchildren, 39 percent are girls, the education ministry says.

But US-led NATO troops will withdraw from Afghanistan by the end of 2014, and rights activists fear that some of the gains made by women in the past decade could be lost as Taliban pressure on the government increases.

For now, though, the Mobile Teacher is bringing new hope to those who missed their chance of an education in the past.

.


Related Links
Space Technology News - Applications and Research






Comment on this article via your Facebook, Yahoo, AOL, Hotmail login.

Share this article via these popular social media networks
del.icio.usdel.icio.us DiggDigg RedditReddit GoogleGoogle








TECH SPACE
Samsung plans no settlement with Apple: executive
Seoul (AFP) Nov 14, 2012
A top Samsung executive said Wednesday that the South Korean electronics giant had no plans to follow Taiwanese firm HTC in seeking a settlement over its patent disputes with arch-rival Apple. Samsung and Apple are currently embroiled in patent lawsuits in 10 nations including the United States and Germany, accusing each other of stealing design and technology. HTC, which had been locked ... read more


TECH SPACE
Chinese LED firm plans record investment in Taiwan

US to station powerful radar, space telescope in Australia

Afghan women learn literacy through mobile phones

36 in one fell swoop as researchers observe impossible ionization

TECH SPACE
LynuxWorks LynxOS-SE Deployed by ITT Exelis in New Line of Software-Defined Radios

Digital Modular Radios For New US Navy Ships and Submarines

Raytheon BBN Technologies' WNaN next generation network software selected for NIE 13.1 experiment

Raytheon announces Small Format Guard to secure data transfer for mobile and tactical forces

TECH SPACE
Arianespace's fourth Spaceport mission with Soyuz ready for fueling

Ariane 5's sixth launch of 2012

Ariane 5 is poised for Arianespace's launch with the EUTELSAT 21B and Star One C3 satellites

Ariane 5 orbits EUTELSAT 21B and Star One C3 satellites

TECH SPACE
Quattro Group Gains Visibility And Control With Ctrack

Saudi Arabia to Launch Two Satellites

Nokia buys 3D mapping firm in location services push

Gazprom to Launch Two Satellites by Yearend

TECH SPACE
China needs 4,960 planes by 2031: state media

Airbus wins Chinese corporate jet order

China unveils attack helicopter at airshow: report

Lockheed Martin Continues To Deliver CBP P-3's Ahead Of Schedule

TECH SPACE
First noiseless single photon amplifier

New study reveals challenge facing designers of future computer chips

No Japan electronics bailout, minister hints

Quantum kisses change the color of nothing

TECH SPACE
Surveying Earth's interior with atomic clocks

Storms, Ozone, Vegetation and More: NASA-NOAA Suomi NPP Satellite Returns First Year of Data

NASA's SPoRT Team Tracks Hurricane Sandy

Sizing up biomass from space

TECH SPACE
Toxic nickel found near leaking Finnish mine: agency

More landmine victims in Myanmar despite curbs on use

China to test 'social risk' of major factories: official

Smog in Indian capital blamed on vehicle increase




The content herein, unless otherwise known to be public domain, are Copyright 1995-2014 - Space Media Network. AFP, UPI and IANS news wire stories are copyright Agence France-Presse, United Press International and Indo-Asia News Service. ESA Portal Reports are copyright European Space Agency. All NASA sourced material is public domain. Additional copyrights may apply in whole or part to other bona fide parties. Advertising does not imply endorsement,agreement or approval of any opinions, statements or information provided by Space Media Network on any Web page published or hosted by Space Media Network. Privacy Statement