May 31, 2012 at 13:17Mobile technology: developing the world
- Transfer
This article was written by TechCrunch freelance writer Erica Kochi , a leading technical innovation specialist at UNICEF. Her team launched UNICEF's open source resource, the RapidSMS platform, which has become widespread in developing countries around the world. She, together with other teachers, leads the Design for UNICEF class, part of New York University’s ITP program, and lectures on how the use of technology and design helps foster international collaboration at Harvard, Yale, and Columbia University. This article expresses her personal views on this issue.
In less than three decades, a mobile phone has evolved from a status symbol into a ubiquitous technology that provides almost all the interactions in our daily lives. A month after the population of the Earth reached 7 billion people in October 2011, the GSM Association announced that they had registered 6 billion SIM cards. A study conducted in 2009 in India showed that a 10% increase in mobile penetration leads to a 1.2% increase in GDP.
However, the way mobile phones are used in developing countries is significantly different from what you usually see on the streets of Moscow, New York and Berlin. This is a market not covered by technology and startups. It has yet to develop rapidly, and Silicon Valley has not yet realized the enormous economic potential of this market for mobile network operators, mobile phone developers, and mobile startups. What are these possibilities?
India and China today account for the majority of new mobile connections, and in developing countries the saturation of the mobile market has not yet reached its limit, so its growth is expressed in double digits.
Such a rapid growth of the mobile market is especially surprising for developing countries, where the purchase of a mobile device for the average user is equivalent to several of his monthly salaries. Keeping in touch is of tremendous value and meets many of the needs of users as they often continue to invest more than 10% of their monthly income in staying in touch. The explosive growth of mobile technology in developing countries over the past five years has prompted us at UNICEF to use mobile phones to improve our programs in 190 countries and territories. Many of UNICEF's programs currently use mobile technology for a variety of purposes. One program ensures that young children are tested for HIV.and get all the necessary treatment. Another provides feedback to communities on all topics ranging from water treatment to access to essential medicines.
It is difficult for people located in Silicon Valley to imagine that “futures” account for 70% of mobile phone shipments. Most of these phones travel to developing countries. The vast majority of the world's population, especially in low-income countries and in rural areas, are now going through the mobile revolution in the form of voice, SMS and asynchronous connections.
Such a limited connection is fueling enormous creativity. For many communities, the possibility of simple voice and text communication has led to a revolution in access to financial, health and agricultural services, as well as job opportunities. For example, many farmers from the agricultural regions of Africa and Asia use SMS services to daily check the dynamics of prices for agricultural products. This information allows them to strengthen their bargaining power when selling their products on the market, and also allows them to switch between different end markets.
Another successful example in this area is the UNICEF initiative - RapidSMS: A scalable, SMS-based, open-source framework for dynamic data collection, logistic coordination and communications. UNICEF is currently supporting governments in six sub-Saharan Africa and more than 200,000 RapidSMS users in the poorest and most rural communities. Primary care providers, each of whom helps hundreds of women and children, are actively using the RapidSMS service. Success in this area is measured by time, money and saved lives. RapidSMS is widely used by governments and communities to promote international cooperation, and is also used in business circles. For example, in Ghana, a local entrepreneur uses RapidSMS to monitor sales of stoves throughout the country.
In many countries where most people do not use the services of banks, replenishment of a mobile account has become another form of currency. Imagine you need to send some money to your sister who lives in a village ten hours away from you. The easiest way to do this is to fund your mobile phone account. Now, for a small fee, she can go and cash this amount from a mobile account in the office of a mobile operator.
M-PESA, a project from Kenya that was originally created to distribute micro-loans and collect payments from the poorest rural communities in Kenya, has now become a large-scale, multi-country mobile remittance system operated by Safaricom in East Africa and Roshan in Afghanistan.
For many governments, mobile money has become a dilemma. They like that their citizens can get access to financial services that can significantly improve their lives. On the other hand, this may mean that mobile network operators and those who provide various mobile money services receive the profit that otherwise would have gone to the central bank.
And still, problems remain. Prices for using these services are still too high for the poorest communities. There are too few points to cash out mobile money. People often do not understand or do not trust non-traditional forms of cash payments.
However, this creates tremendous business opportunities. Even with all network operators in this area, there are opportunities to create a range of services that can use mobile payments. In order to successfully develop in this sector, we need to better learn how people handle money around the world and create applications that are flexible enough to adapt to different cultural traditions.
In San Francisco, you can pay a taxi driver through Square, and in Nairobi you can put money into his mobile account.
IPhones have no chance due to their inflexibility and high price. If nothing changes, Android will become the operating system for developing countries. However, even the flagship Samsung Galaxy Nexus is not an ideal phone. An ideal smartphone would be:
1. Cheap. Huawei and Safaricom introduced a $ 80 Android phone in Kenya last year. In a country where 40 percent of the population lives on less than $ 2 a day. This year, at the Mobile World Congress, the CEOs of Bharti Airtel, Telefonica Latin America and Vimpelcom jointly announced that $ 50 is an absolutely magical price to make smartphones more widely available in developing countries.
2. Durable and simple.Nokia 1100 - the most popular phones in the world. They are well protected from dust, waterproof, durable, have a simple menu system, are disassembled into several parts and equipped with a flashlight. In every city in developing countries, there is a local repair shop and a store with spare parts for simple devices from Nokia. When I travel to developing countries, I rely on my reliable Nokia 1100, not the iPhone. Smartphones are gentle creatures that do not withstand the stress of people's daily lives.
3. Battery life - a week.Charging your phone every day is not an option if you live in a village without electricity. While working on one of the UNICEF projects in the rural part of Senegal, I came across a village entrepreneur who started such a business - he collected phones from everyone and, for a small fee, drove them on a bicycle to a neighboring village where there was electricity, for several hours charged them there, and brought back.
People in these countries spend money to charge their phones. The development of phones that will work without recharging for a week will open a large segment of the market for smartphones.
Data is equally expensive in both developed and developing countries. Data is unlikely to drop in price as fast as smartphones, so even if the phones become cheap enough for the average user in developing countries, he still can not afford to run many applications that are on smartphones. In these countries there will be a demand for applications - be it banking services, weather forecasts, chat rooms, social networks or market information - but it will be especially important that they use little network traffic. One of the technologies worthy of imitation is the Data Consumption Screen in Android, which allows you to set data usage limits and shows the amount of data already received.
The growth of the mobile industry, expressed in double digits, contains great potential for business. While US companies are trying to get into the top applications in various categories, huge untapped potential still remains in developing countries. Work in this area will require entrepreneurs to think through the design of their applications from an alternative point of view. Their end users will have different motivations, experiences, needs and limitations. While phone makers need to create a phone with enough battery life, application developers will need to create applications that use little traffic.
In less than three decades, a mobile phone has evolved from a status symbol into a ubiquitous technology that provides almost all the interactions in our daily lives. A month after the population of the Earth reached 7 billion people in October 2011, the GSM Association announced that they had registered 6 billion SIM cards. A study conducted in 2009 in India showed that a 10% increase in mobile penetration leads to a 1.2% increase in GDP.
However, the way mobile phones are used in developing countries is significantly different from what you usually see on the streets of Moscow, New York and Berlin. This is a market not covered by technology and startups. It has yet to develop rapidly, and Silicon Valley has not yet realized the enormous economic potential of this market for mobile network operators, mobile phone developers, and mobile startups. What are these possibilities?
Developing countries are building up economic power
India and China today account for the majority of new mobile connections, and in developing countries the saturation of the mobile market has not yet reached its limit, so its growth is expressed in double digits.
Such a rapid growth of the mobile market is especially surprising for developing countries, where the purchase of a mobile device for the average user is equivalent to several of his monthly salaries. Keeping in touch is of tremendous value and meets many of the needs of users as they often continue to invest more than 10% of their monthly income in staying in touch. The explosive growth of mobile technology in developing countries over the past five years has prompted us at UNICEF to use mobile phones to improve our programs in 190 countries and territories. Many of UNICEF's programs currently use mobile technology for a variety of purposes. One program ensures that young children are tested for HIV.and get all the necessary treatment. Another provides feedback to communities on all topics ranging from water treatment to access to essential medicines.
Creativity despite lack of data
It is difficult for people located in Silicon Valley to imagine that “futures” account for 70% of mobile phone shipments. Most of these phones travel to developing countries. The vast majority of the world's population, especially in low-income countries and in rural areas, are now going through the mobile revolution in the form of voice, SMS and asynchronous connections.
Such a limited connection is fueling enormous creativity. For many communities, the possibility of simple voice and text communication has led to a revolution in access to financial, health and agricultural services, as well as job opportunities. For example, many farmers from the agricultural regions of Africa and Asia use SMS services to daily check the dynamics of prices for agricultural products. This information allows them to strengthen their bargaining power when selling their products on the market, and also allows them to switch between different end markets.
Another successful example in this area is the UNICEF initiative - RapidSMS: A scalable, SMS-based, open-source framework for dynamic data collection, logistic coordination and communications. UNICEF is currently supporting governments in six sub-Saharan Africa and more than 200,000 RapidSMS users in the poorest and most rural communities. Primary care providers, each of whom helps hundreds of women and children, are actively using the RapidSMS service. Success in this area is measured by time, money and saved lives. RapidSMS is widely used by governments and communities to promote international cooperation, and is also used in business circles. For example, in Ghana, a local entrepreneur uses RapidSMS to monitor sales of stoves throughout the country.
Replenishment of a mobile phone account - a new type of payment
In many countries where most people do not use the services of banks, replenishment of a mobile account has become another form of currency. Imagine you need to send some money to your sister who lives in a village ten hours away from you. The easiest way to do this is to fund your mobile phone account. Now, for a small fee, she can go and cash this amount from a mobile account in the office of a mobile operator.
M-PESA, a project from Kenya that was originally created to distribute micro-loans and collect payments from the poorest rural communities in Kenya, has now become a large-scale, multi-country mobile remittance system operated by Safaricom in East Africa and Roshan in Afghanistan.
For many governments, mobile money has become a dilemma. They like that their citizens can get access to financial services that can significantly improve their lives. On the other hand, this may mean that mobile network operators and those who provide various mobile money services receive the profit that otherwise would have gone to the central bank.
And still, problems remain. Prices for using these services are still too high for the poorest communities. There are too few points to cash out mobile money. People often do not understand or do not trust non-traditional forms of cash payments.
However, this creates tremendous business opportunities. Even with all network operators in this area, there are opportunities to create a range of services that can use mobile payments. In order to successfully develop in this sector, we need to better learn how people handle money around the world and create applications that are flexible enough to adapt to different cultural traditions.
In San Francisco, you can pay a taxi driver through Square, and in Nairobi you can put money into his mobile account.
Phone for developing countries
IPhones have no chance due to their inflexibility and high price. If nothing changes, Android will become the operating system for developing countries. However, even the flagship Samsung Galaxy Nexus is not an ideal phone. An ideal smartphone would be:
1. Cheap. Huawei and Safaricom introduced a $ 80 Android phone in Kenya last year. In a country where 40 percent of the population lives on less than $ 2 a day. This year, at the Mobile World Congress, the CEOs of Bharti Airtel, Telefonica Latin America and Vimpelcom jointly announced that $ 50 is an absolutely magical price to make smartphones more widely available in developing countries.
2. Durable and simple.Nokia 1100 - the most popular phones in the world. They are well protected from dust, waterproof, durable, have a simple menu system, are disassembled into several parts and equipped with a flashlight. In every city in developing countries, there is a local repair shop and a store with spare parts for simple devices from Nokia. When I travel to developing countries, I rely on my reliable Nokia 1100, not the iPhone. Smartphones are gentle creatures that do not withstand the stress of people's daily lives.
3. Battery life - a week.Charging your phone every day is not an option if you live in a village without electricity. While working on one of the UNICEF projects in the rural part of Senegal, I came across a village entrepreneur who started such a business - he collected phones from everyone and, for a small fee, drove them on a bicycle to a neighboring village where there was electricity, for several hours charged them there, and brought back.
People in these countries spend money to charge their phones. The development of phones that will work without recharging for a week will open a large segment of the market for smartphones.
Data Optimized Applications
Data is equally expensive in both developed and developing countries. Data is unlikely to drop in price as fast as smartphones, so even if the phones become cheap enough for the average user in developing countries, he still can not afford to run many applications that are on smartphones. In these countries there will be a demand for applications - be it banking services, weather forecasts, chat rooms, social networks or market information - but it will be especially important that they use little network traffic. One of the technologies worthy of imitation is the Data Consumption Screen in Android, which allows you to set data usage limits and shows the amount of data already received.
Call to battle
The growth of the mobile industry, expressed in double digits, contains great potential for business. While US companies are trying to get into the top applications in various categories, huge untapped potential still remains in developing countries. Work in this area will require entrepreneurs to think through the design of their applications from an alternative point of view. Their end users will have different motivations, experiences, needs and limitations. While phone makers need to create a phone with enough battery life, application developers will need to create applications that use little traffic.