Monday August 23, 2004

Mobile Technology in developing countries It is becoming increasingly clear that the developing countries have adopted a computing device that makes more sense to their daily life - cellphone. I personally moved back to india about 9 months ago and the transformation this country has seen in terms of digital, communications and networking awareness is nothing but miraculous. In the inital days of my return to india, i had to commute using the auto-rickshaw as it is called here and after a couple of minutes in the drive, the driver of the vehicle gets a call on his celphone. I am pretty sure that these guys make about $2-$10 in profits per day and for them to be using cellphone was nothing short of amazing. I started talking to the driver and he could with ease explain to me the service plans that are available in India and in fact was mathematically accurate in predicting his own usage via a vis different services plans. It was only a few years ago in the united states that i had procured a cell phone and to see that device being used by the common folks was very impressive. I later learned that unlike USA, a an Indian service provider's have made incoming service calls free. Zoom to 9 months later, i have now had at least one meeting with all the service providers here and it is fascinating as to what is happening. On the one end are the mostly voice based "receiving" calls only kind of crowd and on the other end are the teenagers downloading a $2 spider man game. Part of the revolution of course is because earlier to provision a telephone line would take more than a year and the quality of service was very mediocre. For a country of billion+ people to start believing in a device that can solve their business problems was a huge cultural shift. Another revolution has been in the way people are using technology, Short Message Service has become very popular as for $1 you can send about 20 short messages. Receiving messages by the way is free. People are able to get more bang for the buck. Everything from "quotes" to "office gossip" to "match making" is happening via SMS. In certain meeting when things are not going right, i even get SMS messages from acrossthe table :). Though i must admit that it was hard for me to type into the cell-phone the messages i was getting from my managers in Singapore. The pace for business decisions at all levels has subtly increased. Lame excuses have in general come down a lot. Now there is no reason for a plumber to commit for a "job" and then not show up or at least inform why he is going to be absent. Recently in a meeting with a service provider, he indicated how slowly things are moving in the standard bodies and how many defects they find in the devices that do not comply with the standards. They are also hungry for technology and monetization of those technologies and are keen to participate in those standard bodies. This is my first column, i am trying to bring out the pulse of what i hear and see in these new markets (2004-08-23 03:35:30.0) Permalink Comments [1]