International Comm & Culture 2009

Sony's Walkman digital music player outsold Apple's iPod in Japan last week for the first time in more than four years, according to electronics research firm BCN.

Sony, whose Walkman cassette players pioneered the portable-music industry in the late 1970s, gained market share after introducing models including the W series of cordless players that sell for under $US108.

Sony has gained customers seeking less expensive products and those seeking high quality by broadening its lineup,” Kazuharu Miura, an analyst with Daiwa Institute of Research, said by telephone. “But you can't really say Sony regained its competitiveness against Apple unless it improves its market share in the U.S. and Europe.”

Password security was thrown into the spotlight this week after it was revealed that 10,000 Hotmail user names and passwords had been leaked online. A day later, a separate list of 20,000 addresses and passwords for Gmail, Yahoo and AOL were found on the web.

Using mobiles for just calls and texting is a thing of the past, as a third of Australians now check emails on their handsets and more than 70 per cent access mobile entertainment and information services.

In spite of the global financial crisis, the use of mobile phone services has continued to grow in the past year as more Australians buy internet-enabled smartphones, the 2009 Australian Mobile Phone Lifestyle Index reveals.

In last year's survey, just 7 per cent of respondents accessed social networking sites from their handsets, but this figure has jumped this year to 32 per cent, with half of those accessing the sites daily.

WHEN Sarah Morgan, a slenderly framed 10-year-old, came home from primary school with a McDonald's food voucher and a size 16 T-shirt that she had won in a basketball competition, her mother, a health campaigner, was livid.

As a three-year-old, Sarah had already associated purple with chocolate.

Martin says the standards released by the Australian Communications and Media Authority fail to regulate junk-food promotions on TV or thwart the sophisticated techniques employed by advertisers to create ''pester power'' - when children continually ask their parents for something. By restricting advertising only during low-rating children's programs, Martin says, the authority has ignored evidence that justifies action which could prevent up to one in three children from becoming obese.

ABOUT 2 million people are considering ditching their fixed-line home phones, as Australians move closer to becoming one of the world's first wireless economies.

There are 105 mobiles for every 100 people, making Australia one of the most saturated markets in the world behind South Korea, with 114 mobile phones for every 100 people.

An ACMA study last year found the decline of fixed lines has been led by younger consumers. About 91 per cent of retirees said their main form of communication was the fixed-line phone, while 70 per cent of 18-to-31 year-olds consider mobile phones as their main form of communication.

The Bureau of Statistics says Australia's annual net migration soared in the first three months of this year to 278,000 - up from just 100,000 five years ago.

MELBOURNE'S population has reached 4 million and Australia's is surging towards 22 million, according to new figures that have sparked fresh debate about the impact of record migration.

Victoria's population jumped 112,000 in the year to March. Assuming Melbourne has kept its share, the city is expanding by an unprecedented 90,000 people a year, or more than 1700 a week.