“This year China overtook America as the country with the largest number of internet users–currently over 250 million… In China, over 73 million people, or 29% of all internet users in the country, use mobile phones to get online.”
-Excerpt from The meek shall inherit the web, The Economist: Technology Quarterly, 9/6/2008
Mobile phones are perhaps the best example of the leapfrogging technology in the developing world. Internet usage has grown every year worldwide since the internet was born, but now that communications infrastructures have caught up in many countries, many of these new users will be accessing the web through their phones.
Many companies are already trying to leverage mobile phones to expand their markets, such as M-PESA for mobile phone based payments, Assured Labor for hiring short-term contractors, or Jott for personal productivity. Banking customers can now check balances via text message. Patients of some hospitals can receive appointment and prescription reminders via text message.
Integration of cell phones into business strategies is still new and companies have just begun to explore this. We are going to see a lot of new companies spring up, especially in countries like China and Brazil where cell phone usage is high but computer-based internet access still relatively low.
2 responses so far ↓
Joseph Bamber // October 29, 2008 at 11:26 pm
Great post Jon, I definitely agree! Thanks for the link to Assured Labor as well. Some other great examples of mobile phone usage include banking in Africa, a mobile Craigslist application called Cell Bazaar in Bangladesh, as well as medical diagnostic companies such as Click Diagnostics.
more on mobile phones « singularity // November 14, 2008 at 6:14 pm
[...] more details. China already has the most mobile subscribers in the world (see my previous post on Mobile Phones) and the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China) and by the end of 2008 the BRIC countries [...]