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Some analysts say that within five years, mobile phones in the United States will be able to make electronic payments, open doors, access subways, clip coupons and possibly act as another form of identification.

Some analysts say that within five years, mobile phones in the United States will be able to make electronic payments, open doors, access subways, clip coupons and possibly act as another form of identification.

At the end of 2008, there were an estimated 4 billion mobile phone subscriptions worldwide, according to the International Telecommunication Union, a United Nations agency. That's about two cell phone subscriptions for every three people.

Dell netbooks with the integrated GPS cards will allow consumers to pop open a netbook and get directions and also also make their netbook location aware. For instance, buyers can geo-tag photos on Flickr or check weather information customized to their current location. The Wireless 700 card combines Broadcom's GPS technology and Skyhook Wireless' Wi-Fi positioning solutions.

"Smartphones already have GPS capabilities," says Alan Sicher, senior wireless product manager at Dell. "We are now bringing it to netbooks so the devices know where you are and can help you where you want to go.

Kids, it seems, like unlicensed services because they are free. But the report also acknowledges their usefulness in finding more obscure music and letting them listen to a band before they buy

They are willing to abandon p2p in favour of licensed services that they have to pay for, but they wouldn't pay for a streaming service like Spotify.

It might be that young people have no faith that the streaming services are going to stay around since they operate at the discretion of the record labels, which have clamped down on many services that are popular with young music fans in the past.

Horror writer Stephen King discovered this when he tried to embrace the medium by releasing a book exclusively online in instalments. But the experiment backfired when King halted it after just six chapters were published, saying people had been unprepared to pay for things they usually just took for free. It seems people are not prepared to give up their beloved books to read from a screen or pages of print outs.