MERGERS AND AQUISITION AS GROWTH STRATEGIES IN NIGERIA, ENUGU MAIN)CHAPTER TWO
LITERATURE REVIEW
2.2. CONCEPTUAL REVIEW
2.1 Need for Mobile Devices in Education
The scenario of the Ontario study carried out by Martins (2009) is
based on at least three realistic observations: According to the Oxford
Advanced Learner’s Dictionary (2004), mobile phone is a telephone that
does not have wires and works by radio that can be carried with to use
every where. According to Rich Ling (2003), the mobile phone has
fundamentally affected our society, accessibility, safety, and security,
co-ordination of social and business activities and use of public
places. It has just become the part of culture of every region in the
world.
The craze of mobile phone started after 1980’s in the world, but it
has now touched the level of esteem. First it was just for a status
symbol but now it has become a dire need of the day and is in the reach
of everyone, even a person whose per month income is 2000 rupees.
According to a famous writer and researcher on mobile phone, Jon Agar
(2005), until not very long ago, the mobile phone was expensive and
preserve for a rich few. Today, the cell phone is everywhere and so
common that it goes unnoticed. Mobile phone culture stepped in Nigeria
in towards the end of the 20th century,
but mobile phone got its fame after 2001 after the establishment of
some cellular networks. Now, every one person out of two in the world
and every one person out of three in Nigeria has a mobile phone.
According to the figures from Eurostate, the European Union’s
in-house statistical office (2006) the total number of mobile phone
subscribers in the world was estimated at 2.14 billion in 2005. The
subscriber count reached 2.7 billion by end of 2006, and 3.3 billion by
November 2007, thus reaching an equivalent of over half the planet’s
population. Around 80% of the world’s population has access to mobile
phone coverage, as of 2006. This figure is expected to increase to 90%
by the year 2010.ACQUISITION
Over the last two decades educational ‘technologists’ developed and
studied uses of computers for teaching and learning in general and
specifically for accounting educationa1 purpose. While benefits become
more obvious and results have encouraged some important changes in
leading education systems (e.g.; Australia, the Netherlands, Sweden and
France are only a few countries where systems in which the use of
graphic and symbolic software on PC or on handheld device are mandatory)
availability is still an obstacle in major parts of the world for most
teachers and students.ACQUISITION
Although, desk computers are part of our daily culture, they are not
portable and small enough to be a personal tool that each single student
can use in school. Portable computers and PDAs are usually too
expensive for use by all students. To address this problem a few leading
makers, Casio and Texas Instrument (TI) among others, developed
calculators providing specific applications for accounting learning. The
most widely used applications are graphic and symbolic calculators
(known also as CAS – computer algebra systems), number calculators and
some geometry applications. Along the trends of current education and
the improved capabilities of hardware, calculator makers invest in
making the personal tool to function also as a communication device in
class (The TI navigator for example) and to provide customizing options
to users by allowing downloading new applications from the web or
computers. They also improve the hardware by providing larger screens,
larger keyboards and advanced input and data collection devices (such as
temperature or light probes).ACQUISITION
Obviously, such improved tools are far from cheap and require special
investment for math class and reducing the chances of all school
systems to benefit from it. The development of new uses and new hardware
for mobile phones seem to move in the opposite direction: Starting from
an always available personal device for verbal communication, functions
have been added to create uses that would soon turn the phone to be the
ultimate general purpose handbag and personal computer.ACQUISITION
The education community has proved slow to explore the new reality
that this device introduces. While there is still a lot to learn about
uses of cellular phones for purposes other than phone calls, it becomes
obvious that treating them only as a distraction to school and to the
proper education is the wrong way to go (as we treated computers in
school a generation ago). Mobile phones and mobile learning will allow
students to learn anytime, anywhere and with any media. For example: the
mobile phone already possesses the technological options that the
industry of calculators is now seeking for pedagogical reasons. Thus
mobility, availability and flexibility are the keywords here.
2.2 Trends in Mobile Phones Utilization
Mobile phones are highly popular all over the world: for example – in
Hong Kong, the mobile phone penetration rate is 98.2% as of August
2003, and analysts predict that by the end of 2004, every Hong Kong
person will own one mobile phone on average (Wong et al, 2004); In the
UK it is estimated that 81% of 11-15 year olds and 96% of 16-24 year
olds have a mobile phone (Lubega et al, 2004). If we add to the above
the fact that people spend more than 50% of their time outside their
office or classroom (Hayes et al, 2004), it is only understandable why
mobile phone companies are working hard to develop the “3G” (3rd
generation) mobile phones that will enable users not only to talk but
actually do almost everything they now do with their PC.ACQUISITION
The mobile phone market develops rapidly: the global mobile commerce
market will reach 200 billion dollars by 2004; there will be more than 1
billion wireless internet subscribers worldwide by 2005; multi-purpose
handheld devices (PDA and mobile phones) will outsell laptop/desktop
computers combined by 2005 (Hayes, 2004). Besides its mobility,
flexibility and availability, the mobile phone is also attractive
because of its importance to teenage identity and friendship (Eldridge
et al, 2001, at Attewell et al, 2003): Mobile phones are available and
are part of the daily culture of almost every child.ACQUISITION
The frequently offered content services offered on the cellular phone are:
• Messaging:
SMS (short messaging services – text only),
EMS (enhanced messaging service – simple animation and sound)
MMS (multimedia messaging services – unlimited messages that contain graphics, pictures, and video)
chat
POC (push to talk over the cellular) – direct connection without dialing, VoIP, Simplex connection.
• Imaging:
Picturing video, sharing video, watching video on “real time” (video
download, video streaming, video phone, and video on demand).
Games: Local and online games, Animation and 3D, Multi users games,
• Business:
Online PIM (personal information management).
Tailored information & content presentation for different user interfaces (WCSS).
Emails and internet services.
Wireless village solution:
Presence: information about the user’s location, availability, state, connection mode and more.
Instant messaging.
Grouping and group definitions.
Sharing of content in a shared database.
• Media:
Online information resources
TV and press online
Mob logging – Mobile ‘blogging’ websites offer an increasingly
popular method for users to store & share their images by posting
pictures, video and text from the mobile phone directly to the Internet,
for free.
We therefore aim to probe how the availability of a common technology
(not built for educational purposes) can become an effective part of
learning and teaching and how mobile practices can have an impact on
teaching and learning in general and specifically of accounting? How can
we use the mobile phone as a smart mobile learning tool that students