Mobile communication - The smart way: Mobile instant messaging and why we need it

Mobile devices such as cell phones and laptops are increasingly becoming part of today's lifestyle, and so too are the applications that go along with these devices. Apart from the normal voice services provided on mobile phones, text-based instant messaging applications have greatly enhanced our communication capabilities with others while on the move. Global mobile phone usage has grown to 50% and is steadily rising with the current number of subscribers topping 3.3 billion. With the population of the world being 6,634,294,193 and the number of mobile phone subscribers being 3.3 billion, this is by no means an indication that half the people in the world have a mobile phone. Some 59 countries have a mobile penetration of over 100%, where some owners have more than one mobile phone. This book aims to describe inexpensive means of communication through the use of instant messaging using the Jabber protocol and text messaging over Hyper Text Transfer Protocol (HTTP). This book also describes ways to deal with intermittent data connections on mobile phone networks in third world countries.