Mobile Phone Growth Exploding in Developing Nations

For those who haven’t read the excellent series of six articles on telecommunications in emerging markets (The Economist, 9/26/09), I highly recommend you do.

The articles review the economic impact of low-cost mobile handsets for commerce, pre-paid vs. post-paid mobile services, new data services that boost business, China’s emergence in wireless telecommunications services and handset manufacturing, mobile phones for financial transactions, and Internet access as the voice markets become saturated.

The six articles provide a broad perspective on wireless growth within the developing world. The striking disparity between mobile in the developed and developing worlds is humbling. While mobile users in the United States, Europe and Asia enjoy the benefits of affordable voice and data services, most of the rest of the world is only beginning to prosper from voice services.

Building a phone business in Uganda…developing nations embrace mobile

One woman’s life was transformed starting with a single mobile phone. She micro-financed a loan to pay for the phone and small antenna. Earning a small amount of money from each phone call, she was able to build a sustainable business by buying a second phone.

As mobile handsets dropped in price, others in her village bought their own phones, paying more for phone service than for water, energy and other necessities. People in developing nations have discovered that having a mobile phone pays for itself quickly and is a necessity for improving their financial condition.

Additional Statistics

• “…adding 10 mobile phones per person in a typical developing country boosts growth in GDP per person by 0.8 percentage points.”

• “In 2000 the developing countries accounted for around one-quarter of the world’s 700m or so mobile phones. By the beginning of 2009 their share had grown to three-quarters of a total which by then had risen to over 4 billion…” (Because many people have multiple phones, Ericsson, the world’s largest manufacturer of telecommunications equipment, estimates that 3.6 billion people on Earth have mobile phones.)
  
• China has 700 million mobile subscribers. India is growing at 15.6M per month as of March, 2009. And Africa has the fastest rate of subscriber growth. Remaining growth in voice service is occurring among the developing world’s rural poor. By 2013, the GSMA, an industry group, estimates a subscriber total of 6 billion; half of new users in China and India.

Review the Economist’s articles for a mind-opening overview of the communications revolution taking place in Africa, the largest continent, China, India and Asia.

What do you think about this post? Write comments below.

Brian recommends readng: